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Magus
By Magus
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Instead of worrying about using data recovery software, why not just make and maintain backups. It's much easier and is far more reliable.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Magus said:

A software that specifically "zeroes-out" the free space.

Just to clarify, you have files there that you wish to retain and you only wish to zero out any unused space? If so, the first thing that comes to mind would be the dd command under Linux -- just write a really large file that contains nothing but zeroes with dd, like e.g. dd if=/dev/zero of=zerofile bs=64M

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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1 minute ago, Magus said:

That's not the issue at all.

 

It's more about proving to someone that I no longer have a specific file on my system -- as ridiculous as that sounds. They won't be convinced until I share reports that verify it's been wiped from shadow memory.

 

This involves me recording myself scanning that drive, placing the results in a text file, and then recording myself getting the hashes for the text file in the same video as well before sending it over.

Then my suggestion works fine: just write a really large file containing nothing but zeroes, then delete the file when done and POOF -- all the space has been zeroed.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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Just now, Magus said:

Is there a Windows equivelant to what you said?

Almost certainly, but I'm not aware of any, personally. I always use Linux for any more unusual and/or lower-level stuff, so I'm not particularly up-to-date on all the Windows-tools available. That said, if you're handy with Python, you could easily whip up a Python-script to do the same thing in just a few lines of code.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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6 minutes ago, Magus said:

I know it sounds kind-of ridiculous and yes there's a million ways I could subvert this if I wanted to (there's the issue of not being able to prove a negative), but I want to prove my innocence to the best of my ability in any case.

I was about to say you could simply keep an encrypted copy of the file...

 

In any case here are some ways for Windows:

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/3-ways-create-random-dummy-files-windows-given-size

Remember to either quote or @mention others, so they are notified of your reply

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Posted

1. Insert Mint live USB

2. Go to Preferences > Disks

3. Select your disk and "Format"

4. Select "overwrite data with zeroes"

5. Victory!

Aerocool DS are the best fans you've never tried.

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Just now, aisle9 said:

3. Select your disk and "Format"

OP doesn't want to format the drive, only to zero out unused space.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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6 minutes ago, Magus said:

Given that it appears to be legacy software, it'll work just fine on a modern hard disk formatted with GPT-NTFS?

 

It works fine. I use it all the time on vms that I don't have trim enabled on .

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