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Thread: 100% secure hard drive wipe

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    Civilian Nick F's Avatar
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    100% secure hard drive wipe

    I'll be selling my two 400GB hard drives in the for sale section but obvisouly want to ensure all the data has been wiped and can't be recovered.

    Anything out there that's great and free?

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    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Eraser
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Dban.

  4. #4
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    DBAN ftw. Killdisk is fairly decent but you have to pay for the silly high security 10 billion passes version.

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    Administrator Moby-Dick's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    very big hammer usually does the trick
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    cat /dev/null streetster's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    very big hammer usually does the trick
    not many people want to buy smashed up harddrives tho

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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Linux live CD -

    dd if=null of=/dev/<hard drive)
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    cat /dev/null streetster's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    what would

    dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda (or whichever hd) do

    fill the drive with random?

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    Linux live CD -

    dd if=null of=/dev/<hard drive)
    /dev/null is empty, and has no length. you mean /dev/zero

    and you're right.

    "hard disk erasers" are a convenient lie. read The Great Zero Challenge for the reality (i.e. *1* pass is more than enough and completely unrecoverable)

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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    /dev/null is empty, and has no length. you mean /dev/zero

    and you're right.
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Saw a bit by some security chap who said that, of all of the readily available apps., only Eraser made files unrecoverable.
    For most purposes 7 passes would be OK.

    Eraser includes DBAN for making a Nuke Disk.
    PeterC

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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by streetster View Post
    not many people want to buy smashed up harddrives tho
    Just advertise it as a security feature.
    Life is like Computing, just when you get it all working properly, Bits need replacing

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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    The simplest way would be to FDISK from a DOS disk, then install DOS this and the format alters the physical attributes of the File system to such a point that any info on the disk would become unrecoverable. Don’t forget to make several partitions as DOS only sees 2Gb of drive.
    Simple cheap and affective. + The disk is still usable afterward.
    Life is like Computing, just when you get it all working properly, Bits need replacing

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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by Phillikon View Post
    The simplest way would be to FDISK from a DOS disk, then install DOS this and the format alters the physical attributes of the File system to such a point that any info on the disk would become unrecoverable. .
    No - altering the file table does not make the data unrecoverable. It might make it harder to recover, but depending on the resources and determination of the person examining the disk, the data is still there and available for inspection.

    DBAN has been mentioned - there is also shred

    This link has some useful info

    The Hard Disk Shred/Wipe Page
    Last edited by peterb; 10-03-2008 at 12:41 PM.
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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by Giraffe View Post
    Saw a bit by some security chap who said that, of all of the readily available apps., only Eraser made files unrecoverable.
    For most purposes 7 passes would be OK.

    Eraser includes DBAN for making a Nuke Disk.
    "According to our Unix team, there is less than a zero percent chance of data recovery after that dd command. The drive itself has been overwritten in a very fundamental manner. However, if for legal reasons you need to demonstrate that an effort is being made to recover some or all of the data, go ahead and send it in and we'll certainly make an effort, but again, from what you've told us, our engineers are certain that we cannot recover data from the drive. We'll email you a quote."

    wanna waste time with multiple passes?

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    Re: 100% secure hard drive wipe

    Quote Originally Posted by Nick F View Post
    I'll be selling my two 400GB hard drives in the for sale section but obvisouly want to ensure all the data has been wiped and can't be recovered.

    Anything out there that's great and free?

    Haha...............dont worry, im not an international crime boss

    (It takes me all my time to remember how to RAID a drive)

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