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Shredding the data on hard drives

Discussion in 'Techno-Magic' started by Taluntain, Oct 24, 2006.

  1. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    [​IMG] I'll be retiring my old computer soon, and I have two non-SATA drives in it that I can't transfer over to my new box, so I intend to sell them along with everything else in the box once I copy the data over.

    However, I'm well aware that just deleting the data, or even formatting the drives will not actually erase all the data on it, and that if I happened to sell these drives to someone persistent enough, they could recover my old data, which is obviously far too great a security risk than I'd be willing to accept.

    So, I assume that there are programs out there that actually handle the process of rewriting the whole drive with useless information so that the drives can be sold to total strangers without worrying about it.

    I'm looking for a free and easy to use one, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know here.
     
    Taluntain, Oct 24, 2006
    #1
  2. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Blackthorne TA, Oct 25, 2006
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  3. Disciple of The Watch

    Disciple of The Watch Preparing The Coming of The New Order Veteran

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    Govermental security standarts for data says that seven formats will completly swipe all data from the drive. When they get rid of old computers, they do seven formats to shred all the sensitive data.

    Just get a DOS boot disk with format on it, and do it like 10 times and all data will be gone forever.
     
    Disciple of The Watch, Oct 25, 2006
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  4. Celesialraven Gems: 11/31
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    Webroot Window Washer does similar things. Although it does require that you eventually buy it, it gives a 30 day trial period (which is more than enough to do what you need to do).
     
    Celesialraven, Oct 25, 2006
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  5. kuemper Gems: 31/31
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    A really powerful electron magnet.
     
    kuemper, Oct 25, 2006
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  6. Brallrock Gems: 23/31
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    Magma, that will definetly work, of course it would probably lower the resale value considerably.
     
    Brallrock, Oct 25, 2006
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  7. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    BTA, thanks, I'll check it out. Thanks for the other suggestions too, everyone.

    Disciple of The Watch, I've got some better things to do with my time than to format 2 drives 10 times each for the little money I'll get for them. :shake:

    Actually, on second thought, I might just donate the drives throughout the family. :D
     
    Taluntain, Oct 25, 2006
    #7
  8. Ziad

    Ziad I speak in rebuses Veteran

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    I've not used it, but I've heard good things about this one:
    http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/SDelete.html

    If you check this page in Wikipedia there's several others linked from it, including some cross-platform ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_wiping

    By the way, passing a magnet will not destroy the data. The only way to ensure it's all gone is to physically melt the plates, at which point your HD's worthless :)

    I think doing a low-level format is another option. IIRC, low-level formats will (well, they should) replace all the data with 0, which essentially means that nothing is recoverable. I'm not sure this is still the way formatting works though.
     
    Ziad, Oct 25, 2006
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  9. Erod Gems: 14/31
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    DoTW:

    Which government's security standard is that? I would like to get some of their old discs ;)

    Because, a simple format will just set up a fresh file system and leave the actual data intact. IIRC, US DoD standards specify that you have to write a different bit pattern three times over the disc, top secret drives are to be destroyed completely.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method - Wiki entry about Peter Gutmann’s algorithm, that some wipe tools use.
     
    Erod, Oct 25, 2006
    #9

  10. Chas Gems: 14/31
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    The 'DoD certified' disk wipe method is no more. Now when a government owned PC is retired, the HD's MUST be removed, physically taken apart and the platters sent to a department that will shred them. This is for any computer, even if it never had any classified data on it.
     
    Chas, Oct 26, 2006
    #10
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