Best way to remove sensitive data from hdd?

[AgentofEvil]

My dad has an old HDD that contained sensitive information from his job. The disk has been formated, but I know data can still be recovered from it and he is uneasy about giving it to me. What is the best way to permanently clear the data from the drive?

 

[AgentofEvil]

^

 

[Chipset]

Use a free-space wiper, such as BCWipe.
Jetico

 

[AgentofEvil]

<< Use a free-space wiper, such as BCWipe. >>


Thanks, but that link does nothing.

 

[Chipset]

How so? Go to the Download Centre and get BCWipe. It wipes the free space which should overwrite any 'deleted' files on the disk.

 

[AgentofEvil]

<< How so? Go to the Download Centre and get BCWipe. It wipes the free space which should overwrite any 'deleted' files on the disk. >>


WTF? It works now. Thanks for the link, anyone else?

 

[Chipset]

Oh yeah, if you are looking for DOS utilities try Mark Andreas Home Page

 

[zippy]

Do a low level format - go to the drive manufacturers web site and get their LLF utility.

 

[urameatball]

format it 5 times.
that'll clear up 99% of the crap from ever being retrieved...

 

[Skot]

Yup what zippy said. Write zeros to the drive using your HDD manufacturer's disk utility.

 

[LintMan]

If you have Norton Utilities, I believe Speed Disk and maybe some other utils there offer an option to wipe all the unused portions of the disk.

 

[Jhhnn]

As suggested, use the manufacturer's drive utility to erase the drive- writes the whole surface to zeroes or ones, depending. This will render it unrecoverable for pretty much anybody other than the government. If your Dad's really, really paranoid about his porn collection, Norton Utilities can do a "military" wipe, overwriting with gibberish several times. Set it to run, go to bed, it might be done in the morning depending on the size of the drive....

 

[fallenang3l]

Format it (not quick format) 7 times.

 

[AgentofEvil]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[noxipoo]

overwrite it with goobs of pron. 7 times

 

[apoppin]

<< Best way to remove sensitive data from hdd? >>



With a hammer.



Actually there is no way to completely remove data so that the HD cannot be taken apart and the original data read. However, for normal purposes, do a "search" of freeware sites. Clean Disk is a good wiping utility. BCWipe is OK and will take care of the swap file and recycle bin also.

Make sure the utility overwrites randomly and you should do at least 3 passes. 7 is considered sufficient for government security. Some paranoids overwrite 50 times.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

The gov. used to erase their tapes by overwriting them with various patterns of ones and zeroes. something like this:
first run through: 0000 0000, 0000 0001, 0000 0010, 0000 0011, etc.
second run through: 0000 0001, 0000 0010, 0000 0011, 0000 0100, etc.
third: 0000 0010, 0000 0011, 0000 0100, 0000 0101, etc.
fourth: 0000 0011, 0000 0100, 0000 0101, 000 0111, etc.

I think you see the pattern. Eventually, every part of the tape would have had 0000 0000 all the way through to 1111 1111 written on it.

If the government was comfortable with overwriting the data repeatedly to eliminate all the data, your dad should be too.
I would run a defrag that wipes all the clean space (changes it all to 0's), such as norton speed disk. Then delete everything from the drive and do that again, now the whole drive should be all 0000 0000's. Load up the drive, just copy CDs or whatever you have onto it. Then delete everything and do the defrag thing again.
Then use a program which writes all 1111 1111 to the drive, format it, load it up again (with different data), delete everything, defrag and wipe it with 1111 1111 again.

Time consuming I know, but guaranteed to be very secure. There is of course a more secure option: drill a hole in the platters and drop it in the ocean.