What hdd erase and wipe app do you use?

[kleinkinstein]

What is most effective...Dban, Heidi Eraser, another? I have a tall stack of hdd's that need a good clean and scrubbing before I resell.

[corkyg]

Dban is good. I also like ZTree/Win. Both will do DoD standard wash.

[iluvdeal]

I use DBAN. I just hate how it occupies an entire PC for so long. I hope you have a lot of SATA ports on your board. Otherwise going two at a time will take you awhile.

[kleinkinstein]

Good point, I hadn't considered. To wipe right, Dban takes for forEEVVEERR!

[n0x1ous]

Active killdisk

[masteryoda34]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

[JAG87]

Right click on drive, Format, uncheck quick format, that's it.

Unless they work for the NSA, I've yet to see anyone recover anything from a drive that's been zeroed.

[thescreensavers]

Has anyone gotten the latest Dban to work? It always gives me errors, so I get the older version but it does not support really large Drives. It was my fav tool now I cant even use it so I been using killdisc

[corkyg]

Yeah, a full DoD standard wipe will take several hours - it writes zeroes across the drive three times. I usually do that overnight - I go off to bed and leave it wiping.

I agree with Jag87 - most users will not expend the effort to see what you had on the drive. Of course, if you are doing something shdy, then a DoD wipe is good.

BTW - the bigger the drive, the longer it takes. Another case for partitions.

[JellyRoll]

It is very easy to recover deleted info from a simple format. There are several utilities that will recover erased data.
Overwrite your data.

[tynopik]

Originally Posted by JellyRoll

It is very easy to recover deleted info from a simple format. There are several utilities that will recover erased data.
Overwrite your data.

quick format: yes

full format: no

[KentState]

From Wikipedia:

According to the 2006 NIST Special Publication 800-88 Section 2.3 (p. 6): "Basically the change in track density and the related changes in the storage medium have created a situation where the acts of clearing and purging the media have converged. That is, for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001 (over 15 GB) clearing by overwriting the media once is adequate to protect the media from both keyboard and laboratory attack."[17]
According to the 2006 Center for Magnetic Recording Research Tutorial on Disk Drive Data Sanitization Document (p. 8): "Secure erase does a single on-track erasure of the data on the disk drive. The U.S. National Security Agency published an Information Assurance Approval of single pass overwrite, after technical testing at CMRR showed that multiple on-track overwrite passes gave no additional erasure."[22] "Secure erase" is a utility built into modern ATA hard drives that overwrites all data on a disk, including remapped (error) sectors.[citation needed]
Further analysis by Wright et al. seems to also indicate that one overwrite is all that is generally required.[23]
Bradley Manning's hard disk data was overwritten once, and the data that was recovered was from after the act of overwriting.[24]

Basically, don't waste a lot of time rewriting over the disk.

[BFG10K]

It should be worth nothing that a full format only writes zeros on Vista and later; earlier Windows versions like XP don't do this.

[JerYnkFan]

I use DBan or on some HPs they have their own drive wipe program in the BIOS

[iluvdeal]

Originally Posted by KentState

Further analysis by Wright et al. seems to also indicate that one overwrite is all that is generally required.[23]
Bradley Manning's hard disk data was overwritten once, and the data that was recovered was from after the act of overwriting.[24]

Basically, don't waste a lot of time rewriting over the disk.

That last citation of Bradley Manning's case would seem to indicate overwriting once isn't secure enough. Would his data have been recoverable if he had let the 35 pass erase complete?

[KentState]

Originally Posted by iluvdeal

That last citation of Bradley Manning's case would seem to indicate overwriting once isn't secure enough. Would his data have been recoverable if he had let the 35 pass erase complete?

I take that as the recovering was outside the scope of the original erasing. Probably need to read the attached article to fully understand what occurred.

[wpcoe]

Originally Posted by BFG10K

It should be worth nothing that a full format only writes zeros on Vista and later; earlier Windows versions like XP don't do this.

Not to be a spelling Nazi, but by any chance, did you mean: "It should be worth noting..."

Slight difference in meaning.

[yefi]

Originally Posted by KentState

I take that as the recovering was outside the scope of the original erasing. Probably need to read the attached article to fully understand what occurred.

From what I gather the guy was only working with an image of the hard drive, not the original platters, so the interpretation that he only recovered data created after the zero-fill must be the correct one.

[Mfusick]

Originally Posted by tweakboy

I used to run with my dad a Hard Drive recovery business.

I can tell you, how ever many time you format it or you use a app to get rid of the files I can guarantee you they are still there and we could have recovered all for you.

Why you want to do this ? Are you selling the drive ?

With hard drive recovery software worth 600 dollars I can still get all your files back no matter what secure erase or whatever you do. gl

Explain how a hard erase of every digit could be recovered on an SSD or HDD for me?

[KentState]

Originally Posted by Mfusick

Explain how a hard erase of every digit could be recovered on an SSD or HDD for me?

The on/off for each bit is within a range. By reading the small fluctuation, you can tell what the previous value for the bit was. I used a hammer to destroy the platters if I was going to e-waste drives that held sensitive data.

[KentState]

Originally Posted by tweakboy

I used to run with my dad a Hard Drive recovery business.

I can tell you, how ever many time you format it or you use a app to get rid of the files I can guarantee you they are still there and we could have recovered all for you.

Why you want to do this ? Are you selling the drive ?

With hard drive recovery software worth 600 dollars I can still get all your files back no matter what secure erase or whatever you do. gl

How long ago was this?

[Z15CAM]

If you are just interested in deleting all traces of Sensitive Data "MindSoft Wipe" appears to be a proven Windows Application. I've never used it but then I don't engage in Sensitive Data - LOL

I use an old Win3 app called DELPART.EXE to bust All Partitions including NTFS on a Hard Drive before building new Partitions with FDisk or GDisk then Format. It's Old School but it works and very accurate.

In consideration of Data Recovery Software, I can't say if Busting Partitions will effectively remove Data.