Secure wiping hard drive?

[HeyKitty]

What can I use to wipe a hard drive clean from insurance company HDDs? they don't want them destroyed....

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, HeyKitty said:

What can I use to wipe a hard drive clean from insurance company HDDs? they don't want them destroyed....

Find a program that can flood the drive with 0s, writing over the current Data.

[HeyKitty]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

Find a program that can flood the drive with 0s, writing over the current Data.

Yeah, I am basically asking what program people use to do exactly this...

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, HeyKitty said:

Yeah, I am basically asking what program people use to do exactly this...

Oh.

 

1 minute ago, huilun02 said:

Nuke it with zeroes

Do that a couple of times.

[Oshino Shinobu]

You need to zero-fill the drive. That way any remaining data will end up being 0s. 

 

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=1211

 

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/write-zeros-format-command.htm

[ChrisCross]

just a question:

isnt it enough to just delete the partition on hdd's? what does flooding with 0 do better?

[Centurius]

http://www.dban.org/

1 minute ago, ChrisCross said:

just a question:

isnt it enough to just delete the partition on hdd's? what does flooding with 0 do better?

The old data remains on the disk, a professional can still retrieve it.

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, ChrisCross said:

just a question:

isnt it enough to just delete the partition on hdd's? what does flooding with 0 do better?

¨Deleting¨ it just gets rid of the system´s knowledge of where the data is. The data can still be found using various softwares and such.

[ChrisCross]

Just now, Centurius said:

http://www.dban.org/

The old data remains on the disk, a professional can still retrieve it.

thanks i thought was only a thing with ssd's

[ChrisCross]

Just now, Starelementpoke said:

¨Deleting¨ it just gets rid of the system´s knowledge of where the data is. The data can still be found using various softwares and such.

ah now i get the zero method  

[GlassBomb]

4 minutes ago, ChrisCross said:

just a question:

isnt it enough to just delete the partition on hdd's? what does flooding with 0 do better?

Deleting it just tells the computer that it's OK to fill up that space that was "deleted".

 

Flooding it with 0's will fill up the harddrive with 'empty' data.

[HeyKitty]

3 minutes ago, GlassBomb said:

Deleting it just tells the computer that it's OK to fill up that space that was "deleted".

 

Flooding it with 0's will fill up the harddrive with 'empty' data.

Now is there a way to flll with 0s then go and fill with 1s then 0s one more time?

[Centurius]

2 minutes ago, HeyKitty said:

Now is there a way to flll with 0s then go and fill with 1s then 0s one more time?

I'm fairly sure DBAN has options for that.

[zMeul]

26 minutes ago, ChrisCross said:

thanks i thought was only a thing with ssd's

it's not a thing with SSDs since:

1. deleting stuff from a SSD does a "zero fill" (to be read empty) on those cells - SSDs work differently; on a SSD you cannot write over a "used" cell, it 1st needs to be emptied
2. most SSDs use self encryption - once you delete the partition, the SSD's logic will generate a new encryption key
3. to sanitize a SSD you need a single pass secure erase; HDDs need multiple passes and even then it's not 100% proof

[Luc401]

I use dereks boot and nuke for work.

[othertomperson]

18 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Pointless

Yeahhh it's really not. HDDs are not perfect digital devices. There will be traces of a prior magnetic field on the plates after you have overwritten all the data with junk. This is what forensic data recovery relies on.

[Jarsky]

You don't need to install software if you use Windows. 

 

Open CMD Prompt as Admin

Type 'diskpart'

Type 'list disk' and find which drive number the disk is

Type 'select disk <n>' where <n> is the number of the drive

Type 'list disk' to confirm correct disk selected

Type 'clean all' to start zero'ing the disk and destroying data. 

 

Keep in mind no matter what method you use, its approx 1hr per 500GB I believe.

There really is no need to write 0's then 1's then 0's  - once you've destroyed those blocks theyre gone. Data recovery can only be done as long as the chunks are intact. Data recovery is really only if you've lost the partition header, or data is jumbled. Once you write 0's to the whole drive, it's impossible to be recovered. There may be a possibility of recovering a bit, but you need at least 8 bits for 1 byte, and your chunks are typically going to be like 512Bytes - so they arent even going to get near recovering a single chunk.