How to *really* clean a HDD?

[PaperclipGod]

I've got a bunch of older HDD's lying around that i dont use any more, but used to contain a lot of sensitive financial information. I was considering selling them on the FS/T forums, but only if there were a way i can completely and irrevocably format these drives. I know there are technique's to recover data that has been erased and written over multiple times - that's the kind of thing im wary of.

Any idea's?

 

[MichaelD]

Run a large electromagnet over the top and bottom of the HD...about 20 passes per side.

J/K.

Download the manufacturer's HD utilities disk. Run their "zeroing" program at least 5 times. It will take all day to do one HD, but it will be erased.

 

[Heisenberg]

Here's a program called BCWipe that I've used before. It will erase data to the DoD standard. It's used from within Windows though. Doing several low level format's is probably the best way to erase a whole drive.

 

[compudog]

Electromagnet works great. Low level format (drive manufacturer software) and the electromagnet scrambles them good. Radio Shack used to sell a "Bulk Tape Eraser:" and you can find them on eBay for five bucks.

 

[Jhhnn]

There are several utilities out there that will stop anybody who isn't willing to spend a great deal of time, effort and money to get that info. If you're concerned about the fbi or nsa, then you'll want to put the drives in a blast furnace. For everybody else, DBAN will do the job nicely. Google it up, download, make the bootable floppy, wipe away- free. Careful with this, it will detect and nuke every drive in the box, and it takes a while to run, so be warned.

There's a lot of misunderstanding and paranoia on this subject. Formatting does nothing but remove the file allocation table- piece of cake to get info from the drive. Using the drive maker's free utility to write the drive to zeroes is adequate for the vast majority of situations. DBAN or similar is a good idea when dealing with drives from law or accounting firms... just to be safe....

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: JhhnnDBAN or similar is a good idea when dealing with drives from law or accounting firms... just to be safe....

shredding evidence?

 

[optoman]

Lightning Bolt

 

[sharkeeper]

The best story I heard was a guy that wiped his hard drive clean...literally.

He took the cover off and use tissues to wipe the platters off! Believe me, the hard drive's data was gone! :Q

-DAK-

 

[Jeff7181]

If you don't want the drives at all, even to sell to someone else... a large hammer would work well =) Would also help to relieve some tension in your life... wind up and swing away =)

 

[Gerardjg]

There is a dos program you can get from bootdisk.com called wipe that completly wipes everything. In your case I would run it several times

 

[Rob G.]

If you have a copy of Norton Ghost, there is a utility on there called GDISK. It's basically a command-line version of FDISK but with some nice extra features (like being able to create a partition at the end of a drive). Anyway, there's a parameter for Gdisk called DIISKWIPE and that has a sub-parameter of 'DOD'. This is supposed to wipe the drive to Depart of Defense (sic) standards. Takes hours, even on a relatively small drive but it does work.

 

[Grumper]

Well I think I have a sure fire [no pun intended] way to put an old HDD out of business. Take a HDD 12 volt power lead and put the 12 volt wires on to a 120 volt male plug and just lightly insert the plug into an electrical outlet--that should do it. you will take out enough circuits on the 12 v side to render the HDD a paper weight.

This is not for the faint of heart-but with all the nutty things you guys do this seems mild. I would put a 5amp [300 volt]fuse inline with the hot leg just to be on the safe side.

 

[nick1985]

run them over with your car?

 

[Jhhnn]

Well, uhh, grumper, that won't stop forensic recovery specialists- it's routine for them to remount disks in a cleanroom environment, read the contents. Very specialized and expensive, but it happens everyday...

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Catscan or MRI anyone?

 

[isaacmacdonald]

yeah, this hammer, car and overvolting is just silly. If you really need to destory the evidence you should take the drive apart and use a cutting torch to readjust the data. ALternatively, you can use a furnace.

The fbi is no joke. There are ways of reading data from unpowered ram, so I can't imagine a simple zero'ing of the drive is going to erase all the forensic evidence. But simple kazaa activity is not going to warrant this kind of activity.

 

[Slammy1]

Maybe whoever buys your drive might enjoy your collection of porn .

I think 0-fill is what you're looking for. Unless the FBI is on the pull for 1 Gig drives, I don't think you have to worry about someone disassembling your drive and remounting your platters or doing a bit by bit analysis of the surface. But to tell the truth, I'd be reluctant to dismiss it given the expertise some of these guys have. Maybe sell it to a poor unsuspecting on EBay instead.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Originally posted by: Slammy1
Maybe sell it to a poor unsuspecting on EBay instead.

Now that's actually a clever idea!

 

[Spearhawk]

How can the previus information be retrived if they write 0s to the entier disk?

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: Spearhawk
How can the previus information be retrived if they write 0s to the entier disk?

since a hard drive is basically just a big magnet, writing it over with 0s (with basically another smaller magnet) wont work 100% since magnets tend to retain some of their polarity.