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Please recommend a free hard-drive scrubber

M

mrred

Member
The subject says it all. I need to delete a drive completely before moving it to a new office.

This is a medical clinic and the drive absolutely must be wiped. The problem is that the scrubbers I have tried on it have eliminated the data, but when I run a file-recovery program I can still view the filenames which include confidential patient names and diagnoses. The files are not recoverable but the names are still visible.

Are there any programs which will wipe free space on the entire volume rather than only on the partition? I'm convinced that wiping the volume would eliminate filenames although I'm not totally sure.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
Thanks for the response.

I should mention that the drive is an external HD running through USB2

Looking at the dban website, it seems that it will only run on drives plugged into the motherboard. I cannot open the enclosure due to the warranty.

any other options?
 
well,

(a) reformat should get 'er done!

(b) if you use the Spybot Search & Destroy spybot cleaner, you can click to show 'Advanced" mode.

In Advanced mode under "tools" you can set it to x-out the drive however many passes you want. (They call it "Secure shredder" in the menu on the left) You can install that free and set it for say maybe 7 passes. Select the whole drive.

Or some Antivirus products also have a feature to write many passes of Xs over the entire drive. I think McAfee may do that, and maybe others. So see if your Antivirus software has such a feature.

Good luck to you.
 
Originally posted by: readymix
seagate seatools does a full overwrite. bit over an hour for 250gb
Click to expand...


Hi Readymix...

By chance do you have a link to the seagate tools?

Thanks in advance,
Lee
 
Here is what I have done in the past when I wanted to completely scrub a drive, before I gave/sold a used computer:

--- delete eveything

--- copy non-critical files on the disk. For example, I copied my main 20 GB "Music" folder.

--- copy this folder again an again until the disk is full; towards the end, you have to go with smaller chunks to completely fill the disk. The new files obliterate all information from the previous files.

--- reformat the drive.
 
Download a linux livecd like ubuntu.
Boot the cd, then run gparted from the menu and delete the partitions you no longer want.
Then while still in linux, format the partitions with ext3 file system.

Re-install windows, nothing will remain from before that can be recovered.


One thing people may not know about is that there is a hidden partition on hard drives. It is not accessible by normal means. Some applications will use this space without the user ever knowing. The only program I know of that can see the space easily is winhex.

http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/

Load it up and go to tools, then open disk.
Pick physical media, not the logical drive.
When it shows the contents there should be a partition there listed as unpartitionable space.
You can read whats in it by scrolling through it.

You can also use winhex to see whats actually left on parts of the hard drive.
File names, or anything else since it reads sector by sector and not by the drive letter unless you open disk as logical drive.

Example, in my unpartitionable space I found this:
Internet10U
VeriSign, Inc.1301U *VeriSign Commercial Software Publishers CA1F0DU =www.verisign.com/repository/CPS Incorp. by Ref.,LIAB.LTD(c)961;09U 2Digital ID Class 3 - Microsoft Software Validation1 0
 
A friend of mine used to restore a ghost image of porn to the drive then do a format. This way if someone tried to see what was on the drive they'd get a facefull of smut. :laugh:
 
I had a friend that filled his drive with the string" This drive has contents that are considered top secret, viewing them is a felony and punishable by death"

He didn't even format it, just left the string on there , repeating over and over 🙂

 
^^ hilarious!

Thanks for all the help people.

I used a program called "Hard Disk Scrubber" after deleting the partition and reformatting. For some reason the filenames remained so I did it again and this time I have been unable to see the file names (50% through the scan though... fingers crossed)

I think it's dealt with now, although there is a file called $MFT which is recoverable. Is it possible that this is the master file table which will contain the old filenames? I'm hoping this is in fact the MFT from the partition after I reformatted.
 
Originally posted by: mrred
^^ hilarious!

Thanks for all the help people.

I used a program called "Hard Disk Scrubber" after deleting the partition and reformatting. For some reason the filenames remained so I did it again and this time I have been unable to see the file names (50% through the scan though... fingers crossed)

I think it's dealt with now, although there is a file called $MFT which is recoverable. Is it possible that this is the master file table which will contain the old filenames? I'm hoping this is in fact the MFT from the partition after I reformatted.
Click to expand...


Download the program I listed above winhex.
Then open the disk with it and look around.
It will show any and all data that is still there.
Its what police use when they want to see whats on someones pc.
 
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