How can I fully wipe a HD?

[maury73]

Use Eraser, it's free and fast.
I you sell your HD to a normal PC user, use a simple one-pass erasing procedure.
3, 7 and 35 pass rewriting are needed only for commercial, enterprise and critical activities where a concurrent could (spending a lot of money and time) try to recover information about patents, customers, military info, etc.
But for personal use and normal users a single pass is all you need: there is no software or standard controller that can recover rewritten data, you need extremely expensive electonics equipment to do that.

 

[CaptHeinzBeanz]

Try an electromagnet and pass it over the drive that will do the trick

 

[paybax]

That's the best idea yet......Once you do that....you won't be able to get JACK S@*%%# from it

 

[weilin]

hey man learn some very basic programing. write a procedure and let the procdure fill the hard disk text files :lol:

now y would i do that... i have a 8 year old sister ;-)

 

[weilin]

You're gonna need a REALLY strong magnet to do that... any regular magnet wont be strong enough. (I know ive use magentic screwdrivers to mount hds... ive left kitchet magnets on them by accident). Besides the motor in the HD has magnets in it... my best recommendation is only of those older Bulk Eraser things for VHS. Pass VHS tape over it and the whole tape is wiped. Pass hd over.. (i might get stuck in the magnetic field, but im pretty sure nothing will be recoverable after that...)

 

[paybax]

:lol:
LMFAO
an eight year old sister....I like that :lol:

 

[stuart]

there is no complete way to wipe data from a hd, if someone is expert enough then they can get access to your deleted data (somehow). The only way to protect your data from a hd that is no longer required is to take a hammer to it. However you could take your chances and just format it. These days I find it safer to just write passwords down on paper and keep it safe.

If you are clueless in a subject then please keep your mouth shut. There are many programs out there that cost much less than he will get for the hard drive that can wipe data so hard that even a lab cant extract anything usefull.

 

[bitsbytesandboolean]

Everyone here is making a huge deal about this... if you format the drive twice (quick and or full) 99.9% of computer geeks on the planet will not be able to get "usable" data from it. -They might be able to pull some "data" but it won't be of any use (i.e. run or open).

I work in an IT deparment of a large corp. and we use Ontrac to recover data. They do work for NASA and the FBI and it costs over 2k to get data off bad drives, and most of it isn't even useful.

Also, to those people who think a hammer will clean a drive you are sadle mistaken. A drillpress and a magnet will wipe a drive, denting the platter with a hammer still leave the data in tact...

I wouldn't worry about the guy down the hall stealing data from you. Once he the OS on the drive, there is no way in hell he will be able to get anything off it...

 

[Arctucas]

Read:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

 

[aBg_rOnGak]

Use Eraser, it's free and fast.
I you sell your HD to a normal PC user, use a simple one-pass erasing procedure.
3, 7 and 35 pass rewriting are needed only for commercial, enterprise and critical activities where a concurrent could (spending a lot of money and time) try to recover information about patents, customers, military info, etc.
But for personal use and normal users a single pass is all you need: there is no software or standard controller that can recover rewritten data, you need extremely expensive electonics equipment to do that.

I've never use Eraser to fully erase files on hd, but i did erase files on usb drive with Eraser using that 35 pass rewriting.I used *cough* "payware-made-free" (PLEASE don't do this; i did because i have to) apps named Recover My Files, n guess what? :?: :!: I managed to get almost all 8O of my previous data in perfect condition and it scares the hell out of me :?

So is there a way to completely wipe a HD clean.. without destroying it?

Why this?

dont to that it will wipe all your harddrives!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just asking though :?: ....

 

[david_uk]

there is no complete way to wipe data from a hd, if someone is expert enough then they can get access to your deleted data (somehow). The only way to protect your data from a hd that is no longer required is to take a hammer to it. However you could take your chances and just format it. These days I find it safer to just write passwords down on paper and keep it safe.

If you are clueless in a subject then please keep your mouth shut. There are many programs out there that cost much less than he will get for the hard drive that can wipe data so hard that even a lab cant extract anything usefull.

I may just take that hammer to your head and do us all a favour, you useless newbie twat

I'm also surprised you pretend to know anything about 'hard' since you seem so completely soft in the head and probably soft in other parts of your body as well.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

I may just take that hammer to your head and do us all a favour, you useless newbie twat

Let's calm down please, gents. There is no need for useless banter. Let's stick to the facts here.

The fact is that yes, there are indeed methods to completely erase the data from a hard drive with no possibility of recovery, software, hardware, or lab methods.

The US Government approves of the DOD 5220.22-M 3-overwrite method to destroy all classified data with the exception of top secret. There are tools out there that will do the DOD 7-overwrite method that is even more secure than that, and tools that can use the Guttmann method (35 overwrites) that even security experts say is overkill.

All of the methods presented so far that involve overwriting the entire drive with data (like copying games to it, doing a long format, copying more data to it, etc.) are all variants on the several-overwrite methods. The freeware tools that do 3 overwrites are all essentially the same in their method.

The one method that I saw in the thread that cannot be used is to use the VHS tape degausser. This will not work on a hard drive. The magnetic force needed to flip bits on a hard drive platter is well in excess of what the hand degaussers can generate.

 

[vinlouis]

ask the blacksmith to melt the metal

 

[bitsbytesandboolean]

yeah, the sad part is that there are still people on this thread that would say that your data is sill "vulneralbe" ohhh. wah wah...

 

[weilin]

my apologies, those things are strong enough to soemtimes get a VHS tape stuck to them, i figured it would be enough to erase a hard drive.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

ask the blacksmith to melt the metal

Now that is approved by the US Government for destroying Top Secret data. 😀

 

[440bx]

Besides some porn, program files and games, I've had some personal info stored on that drive- passwords and such. It's been deleted but I heard that people can still recover that info somehow.

So is there a way to completely wipe a HD clean.. without destroying it?

Some folks have given you good technical advice. However, I think that in this case the best solution encompasses a little bit of "social engineering". Your data will likely be very safe if you perform the following steps,

1. Overwrite the files that contain personal information.

2. Leave the porn! That will keep him busy away from any thoughts of recovering data.

HTH.

 

[ZOldDude]

Google a program called "Boot and Nuke". Just make sure you run it correctly becuase it removes EVERYTHING...even the zero sector/track that all the other erase programs don't wipe.

Let that run a few times and even the FBI/CIA/NSA won't recover anything.

EDIT: Here is the link...
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

 

[rvnavarro]

yup, vinlouis is right... why don't you try low level formating your hard disk? it writes zeros on the entire hard disk and overwrites your important data. in other words, it restores the HD to its factory state. Seagate provides a software that can zero-fill HDs in their website.

here is the link:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html#how

 

[0zzy]

Get a fairly good quality magnet and run over. This is tried and tested. It is the best way to scramble the data on your drive. There will always be some data on the drive, best u can do is scramble it. For eg. "Password=MILF" will become "#@$%gr12U*@)+".

 

[stuart]

there is no complete way to wipe data from a hd, if someone is expert enough then they can get access to your deleted data (somehow). The only way to protect your data from a hd that is no longer required is to take a hammer to it. However you could take your chances and just format it. These days I find it safer to just write passwords down on paper and keep it safe.

If you are clueless in a subject then please keep your mouth shut. There are many programs out there that cost much less than he will get for the hard drive that can wipe data so hard that even a lab cant extract anything usefull.

I may just take that hammer to your head and do us all a favour, you useless newbie twat

I'm also surprised you pretend to know anything about 'hard' since you seem so completely soft in the head and probably soft in other parts of your body as well.

So you are able to threaten violence. Good. I am not new. Have been around for quite some time. I do not however post alot. You post without knowledge and your inept attempts at giving out "information" on these forums is at best useless and may even cost people money or time. Please for the sake of others just put away your keyboard.

 

[randomizer]

from what i understand, Data can only be recovered if it has not yet been overwrittern. So you could always try hte steps above but ive done something rahter unusal that seems to work. I open up notepad and save the file. Then i keep on making copies of it until hte notepad covered the whole harddrive. Because, hte file is so small, it pratically rewrites every sector so even recovery programs wont see the original data (just your billions of copies of Notepad). WARNING!! (this takes a while though..)

Yea make lots of copies, then copy all of them and paste some more, then copy the whole lot and paste again...

hey man learn some very basic programing. write a procedure and let the procdure fill the hard disk text files Laughing

Or you could just do this. 😀

 

[aBg_rOnGak]

Aww, come on guys...please.....IMO, nobody's perfect+nobody's correct 100% all the time, sometimes you might miss something...Just help this guy, put aside any gripe....it's not that i'm a busybody, i just don't like this kind of "fight"....make peace not war ......

 

[enewmen]

Actually, I think the low-level format you talking about does MORE by also checking for any bad sectors and blocking them from ever being used again. Then it's like getting a new drive from the factory.

 

[vinlouis]

yes it only clears soft bad sectors.

once u have physical ones..u will have super hard time zeroing..they keep trying every section. you can prepare to RMA it

sigh
desktop lvl harddisk arent' reliable at all nowadays.
i kept losing terabytes of downloads
the most common is the head crash... everytime have to throw them into the fridge to rescue them. sad

hope the flash based memory drop fast....so we can something fast and reliable.