Wiping Drives

[Soid]

I have a smattering of drives of various types laying around. I'm looking to wipe and then sell or donate them. I'd rather not destroy them, since they are functional and I don't care for waste. I've gathered that with a full format, it's still fairly easy to recover data on a drive. They've had some sensitive enough information on them that I would prefer to wipe them to the level that it couldn't be recovered with readily available tools.

 

I've seen DBAN and ShredOS recommended before, but they feel a little bit too much like I could accidentally nuke my system, and I'd prefer something uncomplicated. This is one of those software spaces that I feel it's too easy to land somewhere very sketchy through a regular websearch, so I ask if you can recommend a software that works in the windows environment? Preferably if it checks drive health, etc, that'd be good too. I'm willing to pay some money, though I'd rather keep it below like $30, cause that's about how much I expect I can make on my drives.

[OhioYJ]

15 minutes ago, Soid said:

I'm looking to wipe and then sell or donate them.

You just need to overwrite them. Bleachbit can overwrite the freespace and is a free program. However, I generally actually prefer to use Veracrypt which is actually meant to be a disk encryption program, but you can use it to encrypt the disk (which will also overwrite the entire disk initially). Then you can wipe reformat it as a normal disk (so normal people will see it as a regular working drive, and you won't get any weird questions about it not working, basically it will work as soon as they plug it in).

 

If you are just donating them, I wouldn't worry about the condition. If you are going to sell them, then most people show smart data, however many sellers just show a short test, which really doesn't mean much. Whenever I get a new drive, I run it through the extended test. However this takes quite a bit of time, which you likely don't want to do, especially after overwriting drives too. Especially as unless you have a bunch of fancy drives, this likely isn't going to be a big money maker for you.

[Soid]

Thank you OhioYJ. This feels like a reasonably easy way to overwrite with random data (and free, thank you). Multiple format operations is not fast, but I'm guessing any method the involves re-writing all the data multiple times will not be.

 

I got Truecrypt when it came on a (I think corsair) flashdrive I bought long long ago, and it's funny to see it resurface in this form 15 years later.

[OhioYJ]

1 hour ago, Soid said:

Multiple format operations is not fast, but I'm guessing any method the involves re-writing all the data multiple times will not be.

Just writing over the drive once is enough. 

 

I've seen studies, where supposedly they can take guesses at what was on a disk before if only overwritten once. However this requires special equipment (it's not just plug it into a PC), it's definitely a not 100%. This just isn't a spy movie, and I'm guessing your not some high value, foreign target that they won't spend tons time on analyzing a single disk. 

 

I write my disks over once, call it day.  As in reality this is secure enough to keep people from ever finding anything on them. 

[Soid]

Yeah, I'm definitely not a high value target. Just trying to follow good data hygiene practices.

 

It's two format operations, the VeraCrypt format (their encryption), then the normal format to make it usable. I've been given understand that even the full format doesn't necessary change the data (which makes me wonder how it's different than quick format). But yes, I don't plan to do multiple passes or anything. Been reading the BleachBit documentation and they've convinced me that the many passes the paid software advertises is not necessary. This is why I came and asked here, I knew there'd be a lot of BS out there.

 

 

[OhioYJ]

52 minutes ago, Soid said:

It's two format operations, the VeraCrypt format (their encryption), then the normal format to make it usable.

I would just do a quick format honestly. The second full format is not necessary. Veracrypt will overwrite it with random data the first time. You could try and pull stuff back from it with a data recovery program if you wanted, if it makes you feel any better, there are a few free programs, especially ones that will just show you the files (typically many will show you the files, recovery is what costs money in many cases)

 

If you leave it encrypted, someone who isn't tech savvy might not know why the drive doesn't just work when the plug it in.

 

You'll find, just the encryption process takes a minute. Which is the reason most big companies just destroy drives unfortunately (time is valuable).