quick: clearing hd to sell

[foges]

Im selling a couple of HD's, in total over a TB. I dont have any information on the drives that i think would be of interest for anyone, but id at least like to take the minimum of precautions. I dont feel the need to use a program like killdisk, but it would like to clear the table (whatever it is called) and write a 0 to every cluster.

So how do i go about doing that, just a normal full format, or do i need a special program.

 

[Nothinman]

A Windows full format does a bad block check but it doesn't write zeros, for that you need something like dban.

 

[M0RPH]

The diagnostic programs put out by the hard drive manufacturers will write zeros. I'm looking at WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic now and it has that option.

 

[conlan]

Originally posted by: M0RPH
The diagnostic programs put out by the hard drive manufacturers will write zeros. I'm looking at WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic now and it has that option.

WD Lifeguard is what i use, works great. :thumbsup:

 

[foges]

Thanks guys, i ended up using killdisk. dban didnt work, said i had sectors with errors :S

 

[taltamir]

i simply delete the PARTITIONS on the drive, then create a new partition.

 

[Nothinman]

i simply delete the PARTITIONS on the drive, then create a new partition.

Which doesn't do anything with the actual data on those partitions.

 

[taltamir]

it makes it unavailable unless the person in question has data recovery tools and a LOT of time to sift through file fragments for anything useful. The chances of them finding anything is nil. If you are really paranoid you can use a "file shredder" to clear specific files before doing it (by overwriting them with random data several times). That way if they DO search it later they can spend months going through every file fragment and finding nothing.

I have tried to recover data from my own drives after a reformat, its not as simply as you make it out to be.

 

[Gillbot]

Originally posted by: taltamir
it makes it unavailable unless the person in question has data recovery tools and a LOT of time to sift through file fragments for anything useful. The chances of them finding anything is nil. If you are really paranoid you can use a "file shredder" to clear specific files before doing it (by overwriting them with random data several times). That way if they DO search it later they can spend months going through every file fragment and finding nothing.

I have tried to recover data from my own drives after a reformat, its not as simply as you make it out to be.

Hmm, I tried your method on a couple of drives in the past. After a google search and a DL of a couple of free apps, I got nearly all of the data back.

 

[bradley]

Originally posted by: Gillbot

Hmm, I tried your method on a couple of drives in the past. After a google search and a DL of a couple of free apps, I got nearly all of the data back.

http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

 

[Nothinman]

I have tried to recover data from my own drives after a reformat, its not as simply as you make it out to be.

I never even commented on the difficulty but it's not as difficult as you seem to think.

 

[taltamir]

how do you know how difficult i think it to be? you mean as difficult as I make it sound maybe?
Well, it is difficult enough.

I'd like to see some of those magic freeware programs that can just restore it without any effort. please, link one and I will test it out.

 

[bradley]

Originally posted by: taltamir
how do you know how difficult i think it to be? you mean as difficult as I make it sound maybe?
Well, it is difficult enough.

I'd like to see some of those magic freeware programs that can just restore it without any effort. please, link one and I will test it out.

http://www.recuva.com/

 

[homercles337]

Just download PGP and wipe the things.

 

[Nothinman]

how do you know how difficult i think it to be? you mean as difficult as I make it sound maybe?
Well, it is difficult enough.

Because I've had to recover data from hard drives before? Sure it takes more effort than some random person off of ebay is willing to put forth but it's not rocket surgery.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: taltamir
it makes it unavailable unless the person in question has data recovery tools and a LOT of time to sift through file fragments for anything useful. The chances of them finding anything is nil.

Its relatively trivial. Here is what Acronis Disk Editor (free read-only trial mode) turned-up on a hard disk that had been repartitioned and formatted:

http://s89934018.onlinehome.us/image/email5.png

http://s89934018.onlinehome.us/image/email6.png

I underlined/highlighted examples of search keywords that would be obvious to anyone. Complete account and login info to my web host, secondary ISP, and email accounts. Took about 15 minutes.

 

[taltamir]

it only took 15 minutes to scan the entire drive for the ASCII hex code for the word "password" and find an email detailing your password for your web hosting? That is some fast hard drive there. It takes me longer to search through my NON deleted files.

I guess acronis is more powerful than I thought... Also it didn't occur to me that emails were stored in such an unsafe manner on the drive. I had to sift through word document files before, not pretty...

But yes, with the right search tools I guess the amount of human effort to find it would be reduced. It didn't occur to me to just have a program search all recoverable files for the word password... If someone did that, even if it took all night, it is all computer work, and they can reap the benefits quickly. That being said... how likely is the guy buying a used drive off of ebay to have the tools, knowledge, etc to do that... assuming he even wants to in the first place. The chances are slim and most likely those who do wish to steal your identity are too busy writing spam messages claiming to be the prince of nigeria or keylogger viruses.
but you lose nothing by doing a secure erase.

PS. recuva has no option to recover deleted partitions, only search existing partitions for deleted files. ill test out acronis later.

 

[Nothinman]

That being said... how likely is the guy buying a used drive off of ebay to have the tools, knowledge, etc to do that... assuming he even wants to in the first place.

It's been a while since I bought a used hard drive but whenever I buy one I do some quick searches to see what I can find.

PS. recuva has no option to recover deleted partitions, only search existing partitions for deleted files. ill test out acronis later.

So? Recreating a deleted partition is even easier than finding deleted files. Even if I don't know the original partition sizes there's lots of tools to s can a disk for filesystem beginnings and create partition tables based on what they find.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: foges
Im selling a couple of HD's, in total over a TB. I dont have any information on the drives that i think would be of interest for anyone, but id at least like to take the minimum of precautions. I dont feel the need to use a program like killdisk, but it would like to clear the table (whatever it is called) and write a 0 to every cluster.

So how do i go about doing that, just a normal full format, or do i need a special program.

Most manufacturer's tools have a write zeros to the partition table option. Writing zeros to the entire drive will take some time for > 1TB drives, but it is the only reliable method of destroying the data on the drive. As mentioned in this thread, programs like Recuva can still find the data on the drive even if the partition information has been destroyed.