Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Wayout on December 19, 2009, 06:07:41 PM
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I have need to wipe clean an old hard drive. It had financial data on it that I don't want the next owner to have access to. Could anyone recomend a free disk wiping utility that would make that deleted data unreadable. Thanks.
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I would recommend a 1/4 inch drill bit but I don't think the next owner would find it very useful.
:angel:
Strip
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I use a program called Restoration ver 2..5.1.4 it restores deleted file and wipes deleted files
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I use Active@Killdisk. With the free version you can only do a single 0 pass but I haven't been able to see nor restore anything after that even with a very good file recovery program that I have. With the paid version you can run multiple passes conforming to the DoD standards.
Unless you're selling it to a spy it's not very likely the next owner will take the prohibitively expensive step of bringing it to a lab with a high-power electron microscope to get fragments of your financial data so I think your safe with the free version.
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I use Active@Killdisk. With the free version you can only do a single 0 pass but I haven't been able to see nor restore anything after that even with a very good file recovery program that I have. With the paid version you can run multiple passes conforming to the DoD standards.
Unless you're selling it to a spy it's not very likely the next owner will take the prohibitively expensive step of bringing it to a lab with a high-power electron microscope to get fragments of your financial data so I think your safe with the free version.
Ditto...with the free version doing 3 passes manually will make that drive clean as a whistle.
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I use Active@Killdisk. With the free version you can only do a single 0 pass but I haven't been able to see nor restore anything after that even with a very good file recovery program that I have. With the paid version you can run multiple passes conforming to the DoD standards.
Thanky you, that's what I was looking for.
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My brother in law has a HD that he wants to wipe but he does not want to install it in a computer.
what's the best way to physically disable/wipe a hard drive? I said we should just pound it to smithereens with a sledgehammer
Thanks,
gus
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Just take a microfiber cloth, dampen it and wipe.
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My brother in law has a HD that he wants to wipe but he does not want to install it in a computer.
what's the best way to physically disable/wipe a hard drive? I said we should just pound it to smithereens with a sledgehammer
Thanks,
gus
As stated above... 1/4 or any size drill bit and drill two holes thru
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As stated above... 1/4 or any size drill bit and drill two holes thru
Fast and effective. I like it. :aok
Once, years back, when I worked for a small software company, one of the QA folks showed up at my desk, hopping nervously from one foot to the other. Birdlike, she was. She up held a 4mm data tape and declaimed in a serious voice that it contained Highly Sensitive Customer Data and that it must be erased Immediately. I accepted the tape from her with both hands, like a sararymon receiving a business card. I peered at it for a moment. And then I dropped it on the floor and jumped up and down on it, stomping it to bits. She backed away s-l-o-w-l-y, and never bothered me with trivial crap, ever again. Go figure. ;)
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My brother in law has a HD that he wants to wipe but he does not want to install it in a computer.
what's the best way to physically disable/wipe a hard drive? I said we should just pound it to smithereens with a sledgehammer
Thanks,
gus
Give it to your nearest preschooler for Christmas.
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How sensitive the data on it is, and how likely is it that anyone is going to try to recover it and to what lengths they'd be prepared to go should determine the method used. For truly sensitive information, TilDeath's method leaves a lot to be desired. But if he just doesn't want any Schmuck who finds it in the trash from sticking it in a computer and browsing his vacation pictures, then it's probably going to do the job.
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...TilDeath's method leaves a lot to be desired....
Really? This is the prefered method of several Casino's I currently do work for. Two holes at 180 from each other and the drive is worthless. The platters become misaligned and the Read/Write head will not float anymore. We have brought a drive to a recovery company (drive savers) and they we not able to recover the data. Please explain how you someone (not the government) would recover data from a drilled drive.
TD
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Just take a microfiber cloth, dampen it and wipe.
:rofl :rofl
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For truly sensitive information, TilDeath's method leaves a lot to be desired.
Now I'm curious as to how drilling holes through the platters in a drive "leaves a lot to be desired". Personally I use my manually operated analog super duper 3 pound drive wiper...lay the drive flat on something solid and hit it directly on the spindle with enough force to break rocks...the platters shatter.
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...the platters shatter.
I recently was disassembling a hard drive from a Toshiba laptop - in order to trash the data on the platter - and found that is was GLASS with a thin metal coating. Boy howdy, did *that* shatter!
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Please note the important qualifier: For truly sensitive information, TilDeath's method leaves a lot to be desired. Note too that we don't really know why the brother wants to wipe the drive. Is it because he doesn't want anyone to read his email, or browse his vacation pictures? Or is it because it contains confidential financial information for a client base of several thousand customers?
The 2 hole method described leaves a lot to be desired for truly sensitive information because while it ruins the drive as a functional device, unless it shatters the platters themselves as has been mentioned, most of the data on the platters will remain intact. And while you or I would be able to estimate where to drill the holes to do the most damage to the platters, not everyone is necessary going to do so. And while a typical recovery company may not generally be able to recover it because they are geared toward recovery of a failing (but otherwise undamaged) drive at a cost effective price point, the fact remains that most of the data is still there. In fact, depending upon where the holes end up, ALL of the data on the platters could still be intact.
Again, if you are just trying to prevent someone from picking the drive out of the trash and reading the data off of it, it's fine.
But if the information is truly sensitive, given that it takes only a little more effort to totally destroy the platters, that's what I'd suggest. And if it's really important that the destruction of the data be guranteed, use gyrenes method (smash the drive until you hear it rattle when you shake it, or dismantle it and specifically destroy the platters then send the remains to a professional service that will destroy the them in a shredder like this one ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_O7-rqcHc ) - and then (typically) subject them to heat to further render them unusable.
<S>
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If you really want a done job on it, take a sledge hammer to it multiple times.
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Three low-level formats (as suggested above) will do the trick just fine. Best of all, you click a few buttons and the computer does the rest.... No physical exertion required.
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My brother in law has a HD that he wants to wipe but he does not want to install it in a computer.
Agreed, but we were responding to this request.
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Oh, dang it. Sorry, I read it but it didn't click.
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I'm really suprised no one has said anything about exposing the drive to a strong electromagnet.
I thought that would have been the ultimate wipe of choice.
Personally I'd bore a hole in the outer case, fill cavity with ferrite, touch it off.
I really doubt anyone would ever get anything off those platters.
Plus it would be a bit of fun. But perhaps a smidge of overkill.
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I'm really suprised no one has said anything about exposing the drive to a strong electromagnet.
I thought that would have been the ultimate wipe of choice.
Personally I'd bore a hole in the outer case, fill cavity with ferrite, touch it off.
I really doubt anyone would ever get anything off those platters.
Plus it would be a bit of fun. But perhaps a smidge of overkill.
Ghosth, you need to write to the "Mythbusters" TV show with this one. ;)
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Bino I have often thought I could be a "consultant" for mythbusters. :)
Sigh
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Hard drives contain rather massive rare-earth magnets themselves, so I think the magnet trick is a holdover from the days of the floppy disk.
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I don't know where you can buy a strong enough electromagnet to effectively erase a hard disk these days. The last time I tried to do so with a heavy duty bulk tape eraser, even exposing a single drive for the full 5 minute duty cycle didn't do it.
<S>
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Hammer is fine. Keep it simple :)
Semp
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Thanks for the Info Ghastly <S>
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i have a old electromagnet, I was wondering if would erase a hard drive but i didnt want to try it on mine;O) I used to use it on cassette tapes.Mabe its called a demagnetizer. Been sitting in the barn in a box for the last 30 years.
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Mabe its called a demagnetizer.
A degaussing ring, perhaps?
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I have been using Darik's Boot'n'Nuke for several years now when needing extra effective wiping. It has several different methods to choose from, starting from a simple zero fill to a seven-times-random-1-0 twisters.
3.5" disks are made of solid metal, they don't shatter. Drillholes, sledgehammer or even just poking some holes through the adhesive stickers scratching and deforming the platters will make them unreadable for the most. Not to mention shooting a rifle bullet through it!
One good and environmental friendly way is to dismantle it: You get a nice shiny disk to use as a candle mantle or coaster, plus a pair of the best refridgerator magnets on earth! Or if you leave the platter but strip almost everything else, after attaching a piece of adhesive sanding paper (not too coarse, 400 or finer) on the disk, you get a nice 12 volt grinder to sharpen your flathead screwdrivers and wifeys scissors.
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a pair of the best refridgerator magnets on earth!
Define best - that thing left huge scratches to my clear satin steel finish refrigerator door. The door is stainless steel so normal refrigerator magnets barely stick at all but this thing stuck good. And of course my son had to slide it across the surface to remove it :cry Beware - the magnets are literally powerful!
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Oh, OK, sorry for being imprecise. I by the best refridgerator magnets I meant things, that don't let papers slip away under them. I've had enough of those so called "magnets" that can't even hold their own weight on their place.
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Oh, OK, sorry for being imprecise. I by the best refridgerator magnets I meant things, that don't let papers slip away under them. I've had enough of those so called "magnets" that can't even hold their own weight on their place.
Yeah but there's a small difference with paper not slipping and not being able to pry the damn thing off the door without breaking fingernails! :old:
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We tended to use them as whiteboard magnets at school. Could stick a whole semester's worksheet packet to the whiteboard; if you lost yours, unclip the stack and make a copy.
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my last job i worked as a decommissioning engineer for UK banks. my main role was sorting the units for disposal or reuse of PC,laptop's and server's.
all hard drives had to be datawiped i returned to reuse using ontracks datawipe software and the wiping option "German vistr".
if the unit was to be scraped the hard drive is removed.
drilled
degaussed
shredded to smaller than 4mm pieces
from what im told by the "experts" data can be recovered from a drilled and degaussed drive, even from a small fragment of hard drive thats why they do so many stages.
obviously only an expert will be able to recover data from a drive thats gone through all these stages.
i use bcwipe myself as it has options pre-configered and also u can create ur own. it also has the option if the file u want to wipe is in use then it will wipe it at system start up before its loaded.
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Wayout, if you're going to sell this HDD to someone else, google Killdisk. Download and run it 3 times. Any info on it will be effectively destroyed. (I highly doubt anyone is going to spend the money to recover your info, unless you happen to be extremely rich) Data can be recovered from drilled/shattered/shredded HDDs. Computer forensics now use a protocol that uses an electron microscope to actually look at the physical orientation of what the data was. Even if it was hit with a massive magnetic field, the disc will still leave physical evidence of how the bits were orientated. Even tho shredding is highly effective, more and more security conscience companies are opting for shredding and incineration.
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I have need to wipe clean an old hard drive. It had financial data on it that I don't want the next owner to have access to. Could anyone recomend a free disk wiping utility that would make that deleted data unreadable. Thanks.
dont delete compleatlt format the drive and re-install the os, that should wipe it clean
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dont delete compleatlt format the drive and re-install the os, that should wipe it clean
No, it won't.
A "format" and OS re-install will only overwrite that data which happens to in the areas that are overwitten on the installation, which are mostly) going to be the same areas of the disk that the OS was written to originally. The rest of the data that was previously written to the now "unused" sectors of the drive will be intact, and can be perused.
<S>
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dont delete compleatlt format the drive and re-install the os, that should wipe it clean
This is one of the worst suggestions if security is the key. Data remains in empty disk space unless it's overwritten. Formatting the hard-drive won't overwrite that data.
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dont delete compleatlt format the drive and re-install the os, that should wipe it clean
Yea, that aint gonna work. Problem is when you re-install over the existing information, you still have "slack space" Say your hard drive writes in sections of 512 kbs. The file you put in there is only 312 kbs, that leaves 200 kbs untouched. Any information that was there previously, will still be in that 200 section. Matter of fact, when you save any file to a hard drive, that slack space has to be filled, the OS will grab any info out of RAM and fill it. Bottom line is, anyone can tell what's in your RAM (websites, etc.)
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Unless you're selling it to a spy it's not very likely the next owner will take the prohibitively expensive step of bringing it to a lab with a high-power electron microscope to get fragments of your financial data so I think your safe with the free version.
LOL!!! :lol :lol Too Funny. Yepp........I use this as well.
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# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=10240
If you can recover that, more power to ya.
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Have AK..... will travel 8)