Software to obliterate a hard drive making it impossible to take data from?

*Sells SSD and lowers lifetime of the drive by several years due to wiping*

/buyer returns for full refund :D
 
I work on a secure site and every year we rent a big machine which grinds our old/faulty drives in to a fine dust. Which then gets recycled :)

Even if you bend, scratch, shatter, burn the platters it's still possible to get some data off them using the right equipment. If someone finds all the parts they can basically rebuild it like a jigsaw.
 
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CaptainCrash said:
A properly completed full format with zero fill will stop anyone, not just casual data thieves.

I've yet to see any authoritative evidence of useful data ever being recovered from a one-pass zero-filled drive, despite all the claims that you need to overwrite it 97 times with random data and then drop it into the Cracks of Doom in order to be secure.
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I tried that years ago on a hdd - did a full format, overwrite with zeros,but was still able to recover files. In fact I tried several full formats and overwrites and still able to recover files.
 
tipes said:
I tried that years ago on a hdd - did a full format, overwrite with zeros,but was still able to recover files. In fact I tried several full formats and overwrites and still able to recover files.
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*shrug*

I don't really know what to say - I don't want to be rude, but I just don't believe it. Either the files weren't actually overwritten, or you've achieved something beyond the capabilities of professional data recovery specialists.

You say you tried it "years ago" - how many years? A full format in Windows XP and before doesn't perform a zero fill, whereas in Vista and later it does.
 
I've always used a free tool called CBL DataShredder. Can zero a drive, write multiple passes of data to the disk based on government standards (apparently) or just write your own custom string to the drive instead
 
tipes said:
I tried that years ago on a hdd - did a full format, overwrite with zeros,but was still able to recover files. In fact I tried several full formats and overwrites and still able to recover files.
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The problem with this tale is that formatting does nothing. So it makes no sense to do multiple formatting, unless you don't know what you are doing. So it casts serious doubt if overwriting was actually done. You can't get data back if its been overwritten. Its like getting 2 pints out of a 1 pint bottle.
 
Sin_Chase said:
It's an SSD. Secure Erasing will be the fastest way. Not DBAN, not a re-write program but a proper SSD based Secure Erase which is.....instant.
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As you say Overwriting doesn't work on a SSD. So as you say DBAN doesn't work on a SSD. I didn't know this till recently.

The manufactures secure erase functionality may work. But in recent tests with SSD a range of different manufacturers it often didn't work.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/erasing-ssds-security-is-an-issue/

ATA and SCSI command set features for securely destroying data on SSDs ("ERASE UNIT") were available on only 8 of the 12 drives tested and were only successful on 4 of the drives.
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The research team then set about determining which if any of the sanitizing methods made it impossible to recover data from an assortment of SSDs. To begin, 12 different SSDs were sanitized using the computer's built-in sanitize command (legacy ATA/SCSI "Erase Unit" command). Only four were sanitized completely. The paper concludes this approach was not reliable and to be avoided.
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https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/02/20/ssds-prove-difficult-to-securely-erase/

Which is why most people say you can't be sure if you've erased a SSD securely. The only sure way that is currently known is to physically destroy it.

If the data on the SSD was always encrypted it seems that its likely to be very difficult if not impossible to recover.
 
In my experience, software such as DBAN takes a very long time to complete. If I were in a hurry to cleanse data it would be a hammer to the platters job. There really is no coming back from that. I imagine an SSD is going to be even more vulnerable.
 
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