Secure wiping a HD

I know it is possible to retrieve data from a disk that has been formatted / zero'd as Ive been asked to actually see how effective different methods are for my job with a multi-billion £ hedge fund, and whats more it can be done in a matter of hours (admittedly we didnt request much data to be retrieved, it was just necessary that it had been)

Whle physically damaging the drive theoretically still allows the drive to be read (after re-building) the visually physical effort that is obviously required to do this is detriment enough - however we also use a purchased app like Kill disk before physically breaking the disk
 
Cooper said:
This will do you, worked for me.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

boot of the disk, enter 'autonuke' at prompt, takes about 4hrs for an 80Gb Hd.

Good stuff!!!....scanned disk with a pro copy of Power Data Recovery afterwards, and it didnt find a thing....:)

"DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis."
Click to expand...

+1

DBAN will get the job done
 
FrankJH said:
I know it is possible to retrieve data from a disk that has been formatted / zero'd as Ive been asked to actually see how effective different methods are for my job with a multi-billion £ hedge fund, and whats more it can be done in a matter of hours (admittedly we didnt request much data to be retrieved, it was just necessary that it had been)

Whle physically damaging the drive theoretically still allows the drive to be read (after re-building) the visually physical effort that is obviously required to do this is detriment enough - however we also use a purchased app like Kill disk before physically breaking the disk
Click to expand...

Formatted is completely different to zero filling a drive and can be recovered from quickly as all that occurs is deletion of the partition table, no data is removed. It's quick and easy to use any old bit of recovery software to scan the drive and recreate the partitions.
If anything is overwritten, whether it's with 0's or the complete works of Jeffrey Archer then recovery is only theoretical through use of complex physical methods.
 
AbsenceJam said:
Whatever RMSD is, £5 for a HDD as I recall.

I'll find an old drive, fill it with data, and then zero it using dd.

If you think you can just run it through software then don't bother as it's simply not possible.
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humble pie eating time for me....


Just tried that hard disk wipe tool program on a 2nd hand hard drive i got and it destroyed everything on it :)

Ran my usual program for recovery when it first arrived and got over 200 gigs of data off it (nothing interesting though :()

So i apologise for my smugness...tried wipe programs before and they still left traces that were recoverable but that one did the trick nicely.
 
postmanfw said:
humble pie eating time for me....


Just tried that hard disk wipe tool program on a 2nd hand hard drive i got and it destroyed everything on it :)

Ran my usual program for recovery when it first arrived and got over 200 gigs of data off it (nothing interesting though :()

So i apologise for my smugness...tried wipe programs before and they still left traces that were recoverable but that one did the trick nicely.
Click to expand...

Which wipe tool.....DBAN?.....the one i gave a link for?....

If so.....smug mode..:)
 
used active file recovery 7.1 to try to recover data. Used to use Recover my files but found active to be better. Will give the one you mention a shot and see what turns up.
 
No one has ever been able to recover data off a wiped drive using an electron microscope. There has never been any proof whatsoever that it can be done, firing electrons onto a drive you want to recover data from isn't exactly a great idea anyway. A single pass of zeros will destroy all the data.
 
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Oh :| I have had it for years and its been working fine ever since. Will give seatools a bash.

When trying to do the short and long test, they both say FAIL. HD tune doesn't show anything bad on the SMART status though :S

I just closed seatools and restarted it and it just did a short test on the drive fine and is now actually doing a long test, very odd.
 
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old HDs at work we set to with a large hammer... disks with uber critical data get taken to bits and smashed to bits, got a large collection of magnets lol
 
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