Erasing drive with TC volume ?

[Mat99]

Hi folks!

I have a bunch of "small" drives that don't need anymore and will give them to some friends that can use them. So I'd like to wipe them clean, before giving them out.
I have PGP and it's shredder is good for safely deleting files, but it's too slow for the whole drive. Now I'm thinking, if I format the drive, then create a TrueCrypt volume on the whole drive, will that permanently erase all previous data? Since TC is encrypting the whole drive and writing it's data on it, will that permanently erase everything?
I don't really need some super forensic-safe erasing, just enough for regular data-recovery software.


TIA,
Mat

 

[Mat99]

Well, I think I can answer my own question.. it seems to work.

I first formatted the drive, then created a TC volume on the whole drive and formatted the drive again. I then used 3 recovery software tools, 2 didn't do anything (reported empty drive), PC Inspector however did find files, BUT it "found" a bunch of fake/empty doc/tif/xls/jpg/bmp files. All are sized 1474560 bytes, with date 00.00.1980. I can't restore any of them, so.. I'm guessing the drive in now empty/safe to pass on.
Would still like someone to confirm this

TIA,
Mat

 

[sourceninja]

When you made the TC volume, if you told it to quick format, then your data was not overwritten and is still out there. Otherwise truecrypt writes over your data with random data.

Plus, if I remember right, if you did system encryption, you could tell it to do multi-pass wiping of free space.

also, this is what we use where I work http://www.dban.org/

We just take the computer we want to sell, drop in the iso, boot it up and let it do it's thing.

 

[Mat99]

I did not use Quick Format option.
Since I used the whole partition on the drive for TC volume, there isn't any "free space", right?
I'm erasing the drive that's connected via usb, so I didn't use that dban thingy, don't want to erase all the drives it finds

 

[sourceninja]

with whole partition encryption, it encrypts the files in place and leaves 'empty' space empty (just filling it with random encrypted data). But there is an option to overwrite the free space multiple times to make sure any previously erased data is long gone.

So yea, your probably safe.

One last application you might find useful in the future http://eraser.heidi.ie/

 

[blackangst1]

You are correct. Encrypt the whole drive then format. Unrecoverable.

 

[Mat99]

Thanks guys!

@sourceninja: I installed Eraser few days ago, but soon removed it. It always crashed when I started it (the new, 6 version) :/
It seems to work similarly to PGP Shredder anyhow, so...

@blackangst1: great, now I feel safe to pass them on