Help Doing a total wipepout on Disk

[aleksanderness]

Hi.
I have a feeling that formating and deleting partision dosnt actually delet everything on my harddrive. So i tought i connect my disk to another computer and use a software to completly delet everything. Than put it back in and install windows 7 on it.

And so im wondering what software i should use. That could do my job.

 

[rremando]

What are you desperately trying to rid of? Are you worried that some of your vids or pics might surface later? You trying to rid of murder evidence lol?

As far as I know sometimes you can recover deleted files.. Whether or not though, you don't need to worry about your gf finding those pics you deleted esp after you format your drive. Unlikely shed know how to recover anything if it even can be done

Fdisk and format dude that's all you need to do

 

[WyomingKnott]

If there is data on that drive that you want to ensure cannot be recovered, the best way is to issue the Secure Erase command. SATA drives recognize this command and wipe themselves effectively. See http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf for details.

I personally boot into the Parted Magic distribution to do a Secure Erase. It takes about 2 minutes for an SSD, but can take hours for an HDD.

 

[Hawkeye22]

DBAN can also effectively wipe a drive. As stated, it can take a while to run.

http://www.dban.org/

 

[WyomingKnott]

Hawkeye22

Does DBAN issue the Secure Erase command, or write zeros, or offer a choice? It matters for SSDs. From the information available on Wikipedia, it overwrites with random data and should not be used for SSDs, but I've never booted it up and looked for a Secure Erase option.

EDIT: Have you seen http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf ? See page 19 in Appendix A.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Hawkeye22

Does DBAN issue the Secure Erase command, or write zeros, or offer a choice? It matters for SSDs. From the information available on Wikipedia, it overwrites with random data and should not be used for SSDs, but I've never booted it up and looked for a Secure Erase option.

EDIT: Have you seen http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf ? See page 19 in Appendix A.

DBAN no longer lists their certifications.

http://www.dban.org/faq/certification

Their site used to reference DoD (department of defense) 5220-22.M. AFAIK, they are still compliant.

Secure erase is a newer algorithm so I'm sure it's better for SSD's, but don't know how it compares for HDD's. I've only ever used DBAN on HDD's and have had no issues.

Ahhh, wait... I just found this on wikipedia. As of the June 2007 edition of the DSS C&SM, overwriting is no longer acceptable for sanitization of magnetic media; only degaussing or physical destruction is acceptable.

I wonder where this leaves secure erase???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Industrial_Security_Program