filling a hard drive with zeros?

[Maverick2002]

IIRC when you format a hard drive it doesn't really get rid of the data; that data just gets overwritten with new data. I read somewhere you can fill a hard drive with zeroes (using a program of some sort) which will in effect permanantly get rid of your old data. Is this correct? Anyone know of a good program to do this?

 

[KoolAidKid]

Go to the web page of your hard drive's manufacturer. Most of them have a utility that you can download that will do this for you. There are also numerous freeware apps that will do it as well, although the manufacturer's utility is often faster.

 

[Steve]

Yup, the manufacturers utilities will include something that can do a zero-fill (sometimes incorrectly called a low-level format). This may be a standalone program or part of their drive utility package.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

If you have data that's important enough to need destruction, you should be burning the drive, IMO.

Anyhow, dban and you're done.

- M4H

 

[Cleaner]

I've used a tool called Autoclav that will do it for you and will do multiple passes to ensure that it wipes the drive clean. I think I downloaded it from download.com awhile ago. Good luck!

 

[Cheetah8799]

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

this has some utilities on it that will zero a hard drive.

 

[Maverick2002]

thanks for the heads up. quick question: do you need to format a drive again after it's been filled with zeros before using it again?

 

[tiap]

Fdisk and format

 

[DGath]

Originally posted by: Maverick2002
thanks for the heads up. quick question: do you need to format a drive again after it's been filled with zeros before using it again?

No. You really only need to do a quick format to reinstall XP in recommended fashion, which will leave all the data intact, but wipe the partition table.

Also, the data is still recoverable up to I think around 7 passes of 0's. I'd venture to guess most hard drive recovery specialists can recover after a pass of zeros. Not easy, but do-able.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
If you have data that's important enough to need destruction, you should be burning the drive, IMO.


- M4H

I wonder why!
If he uses a program that writes zeros to all the bits, how can the original data be recovered? Why would he need to burn it?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
If you have data that's important enough to need destruction, you should be burning the drive, IMO.


- M4H

I wonder why!
If he uses a program that writes zeros to all the bits, how can the original data be recovered? Why would he need to burn it?

Data recovery services can pull data off up to seven "layers" deep.

- M4H

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
If you have data that's important enough to need destruction, you should be burning the drive, IMO.

Anyhow, dban and you're done.

- M4H

:thumbsup:

I also suggest using full format during XP install. The long format checks for bad blocks while quick does not.

 

[Jeff7]

With hard drives, if someone is bent on getting your data off of a hard drive, you just need to throw a lot of time and money at it - the data will likely be extracted.
A good zero-writer, or something like Dban should be able to wipe the drive enough to keep the data from most of the world.

But if you're with the government or something like that, and you have really sensitive data, the drive should be completely destroyed - sending the entire thing into an industrial belt-sander should do the job. 🙂



Oh wait......the government doesn't always wipe their drives before selling them. 😀

 

[tiap]

Obviously MercenaryForHire feels that there might be recovery techniques out there somewhere that can recover a drive unless it is physically destroyed.
And he may be right on both points:
-who really knows what's possible
-and if the data is that important physically destroy the platters

I bet Nixon wished he had burned his tapes

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: tiap
Obviously MercenaryForHire feels that there might be recovery techniques out there somewhere that can recover a drive unless it is physically destroyed.
And he may be right on both points:
-who really knows what's possible
-and if the data is that important physically destroy the platters

I bet Nixon wished he had burned his tapes

One, it's possible, it just isn't cheap.

And two, keep the political BS in the designated steaming pile.

- M4H