Completely erase a HDD

[BigfootsMonk]

How do I completely erase all the data on a HDD?

I have a Hitachi and I know they have a zero write program. But for the other HDDs what would I use? Also is zero writing necessary?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Just format. If you need very little traces of data write zeros to the HDD. I believe Government standard for up to classified is '4' Low Level Formats.

-Kevin

 

[Umberger]

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

^^ What I use.
Boot from the floppy, and it erases all the hard disks it finds. I'll say that again. ALL THE HARD DISKS IT FINDS. It does a secure erase, overwriting with 0's 1's and then random numbers, I think. Be careful with that boot floppy though...

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Fire?

No one cares about your dirty laundry, and anything that requires dban probably suggests that you should physically destroy the drive.

- M4H

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Fire?

No one cares about your dirty laundry, and anything that requires dban probably suggests that you should physically destroy the drive.

- M4H

...but going overkill is so much fun!

 

[FlyingPenguin]

In this day in age of identity theft, I would be VERY concerned about thoroughly erasing a drive. There's people that recover data from used drives just for kicks, and it's absurdly easy.

DBan will do the job, although I prefer Killdisk because it lets you select the drive in a multiple drive system AND asks for confimation. However the free version only does a single pass - adequate for low security risk data. I would personally feel more comfortable with at least 3 pases and anything requiring conformity with HIPPA privacy regulations requires at least 7 passes.

Anything REALLY important that requires zero risk, you should thoroughly destroy the drive platters.

 

[Baked]

Hammer. Sledge hammer for HDs larger than 120GB.

 

[Umberger]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
In this day in age of identity theft, I would be VERY concerned about thoroughly erasing a drive. There's people that recover data from used drives just for kicks, and it's absurdly easy.

DBan will do the job, although I prefer Killdisk because it lets you select the drive in a multiple drive system AND asks for confimation. However the free version only does a single pass - adequate for low security risk data. I would personally feel more comfortable with at least 3 pases and anything requiring conformity with HIPPA privacy regulations requires at least 7 passes.

Anything REALLY important that requires zero risk, you should thoroughly destroy the drive platters.

Is Killdisk bootable, or does it run inside the OS?

 

[uOpt]

Warning: supposedly there have been drives where a low-level format (as in the IDE or SCSI command sequence) did not actually zero all the sectors. It just reset itself, wiped out a few sectors so that no OS would find a filesystem anymore and waited.

I would get a Linux or FreeBSD live CD and use dd(1) to actually write zeros over the raw device.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: Baked
Hammer. Sledge hammer for HDs larger than 120GB.

Or photon cannon. AK-47s or 10 gauge shotguns with slugs work fine too.

 

[T9D]

Originally posted by: Umberger
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

^^ What I use.
Boot from the floppy, and it erases all the hard disks it finds. I'll say that again. ALL THE HARD DISKS IT FINDS. It does a secure erase, overwriting with 0's 1's and then random numbers, I think. Be careful with that boot floppy though...

Hey cool thanks.

That would be good to because sometimes the stupid windows CD has given me and others problems and didn't want to let me format.

(oh and you can get the CD version too. That's what I downloaded)

 

[RobCur]

some of you guys are too paranoid, all you got to do is copy something over it, anything will do and its not retrievable by any standard.

 

[imported_Tick]

Or, 2000 gause magnets work great too. Best part is, it phisically destroys drive, without making a mess. Unfortunatly, most people don't have access to labratory strength magnets.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: RobCur
some of you guys are too paranoid, all you got to do is copy something over it, anything will do and its not retrievable by any standard.

You are sadly mistaken.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Just format. If you need very little traces of data write zeros to the HDD. I believe Government standard for up to classified is '4' Low Level Formats.

-Kevin

slightly off..... THere is a DOD speck that is loosely held as the gov't standard and it involves multiple rewrites (min 3)of 1's and 0's. it's called 5220-22-M.

There is also German standard as well that is loosely becoming the EU spec for data wiping.

 

[RobCur]

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: RobCur
some of you guys are too paranoid, all you got to do is copy something over it, anything will do and its not retrievable by any standard.

You are sadly mistaken.

Is not paranoid? Is not madness? OK.. :roll:

 

[AluminumStudios]

Privacy Suite from www.cyberscrub.com It does DoD multi-pass and makes sure to clear cluster heads (unused ends of clusters occupied by new files that may still contain bits from old files.)

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: RobCur

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: RobCur
some of you guys are too paranoid, all you got to do is copy something over it, anything will do and its not retrievable by any standard.

You are sadly mistaken.

Is not paranoid? Is not madness? OK.. :roll:

Sadly mistaken in that you stated that all you have to do is write new data over old to make that original data unrecoverable as you implied in your your comment I quoted.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: RobCur

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: RobCur
some of you guys are too paranoid, all you got to do is copy something over it, anything will do and its not retrievable by any standard.

You are sadly mistaken.

Is not paranoid? Is not madness? OK.. :roll:

Well, first off, I'm not aware of any trivial way to tell an OS to "copy something over" a particular set of disk blocks -- it picks whatever free blocks it thinks are best. The only way I could think of to overwrite a disk without a low-level wipe program would be to have it be a non-OS disk, and completely fill it with data, empty it, completely fill it, etc. This would take far more time and effort than just wiping the drive.

Second, yes, you *can* (sometimes) recover data from a drive that has been zero-filled or overwritten with new data. It requires disassembling the platters and scanning them with more sensitive read heads than a normal hard drive has (you can pick up on small fluctuations in the magnetic field strength due to the media having been in a particular state for a long time, and sometimes parts of tracks don't get fully wiped due to slight misalignments of the read/write heads). Not something anyone is going to do unless they have a reason to believe there is *very* valuable data on a particular drive. Doing multiple overwrites (fill with zeroes, fill with ones, fill with zeroes, etc., and/or multiple overwrites with random data) makes data recovery along these lines essentially impossible.

From what I've heard, most federal government organizations wipe and then destroy any hard drives that actually contained classified data (or at least 'top secret'-class data). No sense taking risks.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Or you can just have a strongass magnetic flux pod that kills everything. Hah.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
From what I've heard, most federal government organizations wipe and then destroy any hard drives that actually contained classified data (or at least 'top secret'-class data). No sense taking risks.

Most drives containing that kind of information tend to - as the OT expression goes - "Die In A Fire."

Can't read a platter if you can't form a platter.

- M4H

 

[scooter1]

Originally posted by: Baked
Hammer. Sledge hammer for HDs larger than 120GB.

Has anyone physically taken apart a hard drive and exposed the platters and then destroyed them?

 

[Carter9689]

My advice, call upon the dark powers of Satan. That will erase most HDs and ex-wives.:evil:

 

[stevem326]

I use a product called Wipe Drive. It overwrites every cluster on your HD and, according to them, makes data recovery impossible. You just put the floppy into your floppy drive and boot from there. It takes 11 hours to wipe my 120GB HD with one pass and you can select up to 27 passes. This product is used by the Dept of Defense and many other government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Anyway, here?s a link to Wipe Drive:

Wipe Drive

 

[batmanuel]

Just head over to download.com and grab a free wiping utility. I forget which one I used when I sold my old laptop, but I got it there. Just make sure that the program you use has the option to do a wipe based on the Guttman algorithm, which does a 37-pass wipe that theoretically destroys the data past the point of ANY type of recovery.