Completely erasing HDD's

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I delete and recreate my partitons with DOS Fdisk before re installing mostly - has the advantage that it's free also. I'm not sure if it completely destroys data though.

Alternatively, it can be done with Partition Magic, which when deleting a partition, gives the option of a complete nuke of all data on said partition.
 
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What the guys above have suggested is good. If you are really paranoid about getting all your data deleted you could get some PGP tools to perform multiple wipes on the disk :)
 
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Norton Utilities will also destroy any data left in 'free space' on your HD. Re-partitioning and re-formatting will only destroy the FAT and TOC. The actual data is still reclaimable with the right tools.
 

daz

daz

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There is some software that the military and government uses that wipes the disk 7 or so times with all zeros, then all 1's etc. The data is completely unrecoverable. ;)
 
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Originally posted by daz
There is some software that the military and government uses that wipes the disk 7 or so times with all zeros, then all 1's etc. The data is completely unrecoverable. ;)

Yep SecureClean and Eraser do that, I have them myself.. they're not cheap though.. I think :o
 
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Originally posted by daz
There is some software that the military and government uses that wipes the disk 7 or so times with all zeros, then all 1's etc. The data is completely unrecoverable. ;)

They also have a set proceedure which involves a man under supervision with an oxyacetylene cutting torch but that maybe taking things a bit too far in this case :D :rolleyes:
 
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as long as u have ur operating system on a seperate partion then u can format any of ur other partions without having to worry about erasing ur other partions, or just set ur pc to boot in a D, C sequence with a operating system disk in ur cd rom drive and format from ur cd rom drive!!!!
 
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Originally posted by daz
There is some software that the military and government uses that wipes the disk 7 or so times with all zeros, then all 1's etc. The data is completely unrecoverable. ;)

yeah i have a progam called 'sanatizer' and when you read the small print as it loads up its used by the U.S militry
 
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According to my old A+ Tutor he states theres no way of wiping data off a harddrive the only way to completly destroy it is to throw the drive in a furnis or melt it down!
 
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According to my old A+ Tutor he states theres no way of wiping data off a harddrive the only way to completly destroy it is to throw the drive in a furnis or melt it down!

Yeah, MI5 and other government agencies use sandblasters on the old hdd's. Take no chances eh?
 
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Tbh if you have anything that needs deleting and seriously needs deleting, i..e confidential documents you would destroy the HDD. My way would be fun ;)

Hacksaw thro middle
Magent all over
Set fire
Jump on
Heat with bunsen burner @ full open flame ;)

Should do the trick, altho some l33t dood would still get it back knowning my luck :(
 

JimG

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To be sure that your data is erased completely from the drive you should:

1) Install the drive as a slave, so you can boot from another disk.

2) Use a program to wipe each and every sector of the disk, preferably with a known pass pattern. Jetico have a utility called BCWipe which will wipe the disk with known data patterns and can be set to your own perferences. US DoD spec is 7 passes of 35 CA 97 68 AC 53 Random, Peter Guttman is 35 passes.

There is little need to have 7-35 wiping passes, 3-4 will suffice, only specailist agencies would be able to recover from more than a 4 pass wipe, and depending on the patterns and many other factors it would prove time consuming and costly for them to conclude your getting rid of porn. Four passes will almost certainly have realigned the entire magnetic surface making recovery almost impossible. Remember wiping is about aligning and realigning each part of the magnetic surface until the alignment is quasi random.

A format, or removal of partitions is not sufficent, free software can recover all the data from a formatted drive, even a full uncondidtional format.

As for gov/mil sensitive data, the drives are usually melted in a furnace, nothing more elaborate than that, as any tiny fragments could yeild data.
 
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:eek:

I always thought data was totally unrecoverable after using FDisk to delete and create partitions....

/me thinks maybe I should no longer throw my faulty hard drives in the bin.... I've had some that have failed and I have been unable to access them to get rid of my.... stuff :D
 
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