Wiping Out A Hard Drive - Most secure method?

FirefoxRocks

May 15 2008, 03:56 AM

Ok I am disposing of my old Windows 98 computer and I am wiping out the hard drive for separate disposal. I downloaded Darik's Boot and Nuke and extracted it to a floppy disk. I have formatted my non-Windows partitions and deleted almost everything on the C: drive.

I booted up from the floppy and read through various screens explaining options and stuff. I started the wiping procedure and I was supposed to select a method of wiping. There was Quick, the method used by the RCMP, the method used by the Department of Defense (both quick and full) and Gutmann. I chose the full DoD method because I think that it should be sufficient.

Is this actually sufficient to erase the hard drive? Or should I do another wipe after this with another method? I'm not particularly clear on security of hard disks, I just know that the more overwrites the harder it is to retrieve data.

Darasen

May 15 2008, 04:40 AM

QUOTE(FirefoxRocks @ May 14 2008, 11:56 PM)

Last I checked the DoD protocol is supposed to be to write zeros to every iota, including the boot sector, of the HD in question. That would certainly be sufficient to clean any data irretrievably.

Jeigh

May 15 2008, 04:47 AM

if it actually performs the DoD level erase it completely swipes every bit of the drive to 0's, then 0's, then 0's, etc I believe something like 30 times ensuring that every single bit, even if there are errors in one or two of the swipes, is switched to a 0 by the end. This not only destroys the ability to access the table by killing the indexing system of the drive but literally wipes every single bit clean of whatever data was held there so regardless of efforts put forth there is no way to return the data to its original form. So if it's just one drive the DoD wipe should be fine, but if you are that worried...for whatever reason... then just do it again haha. If its just the one drive, and its a 98 era drive, it cant be that huge so shouldn't take that long. But if the only personal data is like game saves and some personal emails and stuff any type of drive wiping utility should be fine.

ahaslam

May 15 2008, 06:54 AM

i think it wipes everything but i use a cipher but you have to clear the harddrive(format) install an os and then run cihper goes though files which you think are gone but are invisable ready to overwrite goes changing random ly the bits bit by bit
but i like your method

wutske

May 15 2008, 09:07 AM

Most methods do more than just overwriting every sector with zero's. Overwriting it with zero's is just one of the many steps that are taken, sometimes it overwrites the data with ones, fixed numbers, random numbers, ...
Anyway, most methods are secure enough for most users, I don't think anybody is going to pay a few thousands of dollars to read out a disk that you've erased using one of those methods

. Doing a simple low level format should be enough too (overwrites every sector on your disk with zero's, only one step).

Darasen

May 15 2008, 05:14 PM

QUOTE(wutske @ May 15 2008, 05:07 AM)

At the risk of nit picking a bit is either a 1 or a 0.

levimage

May 18 2008, 09:02 PM

This also touches on the topic of erasing hard drives. I've always wondered say. If you don't have a shredding utility running in the background that handles all your file deleting chores, say someone were to delete a file, and empty the recycle bin. Sure you can recover the file depending or not if anything was recording on the hard drive location. So here is the question. Is there anything out there that will clean a drive with an OS already installed by writing zeros on a drives' empty space; thereby, getting rid of the no shredded files.

If there is let me know, especially if it is something that is free or some form of open source.

Thanks in advance. By the way I use CCleaner. with a recycle bin option but there are times I don't use it to delete files or extra copies of files.

Jeigh

May 18 2008, 11:38 PM

I would imagine such a program exists... I dont know of any but they must. I mean you likely wouldn't want one that is constantly doing like a 30 passover wipe of every files storage location when you delete it but having one to run on occasion to clear out the debris would be a good way to ensure any sensitive data is gone forever after deleting it.

Atomic0

Jun 7 2008, 08:36 AM

There is no perfect way of erasing the data and contents of your hard drive. Even if you wipe over you data again and again, there will always be a way to partially restore the data. However, such data recovery procedures are not commonly or readily available.

xboxrulz

Jun 7 2008, 05:25 PM

This should wipe the drive clean of anything. However, why would you want to zero out the drive? The only reason is if you have very important data you don't want people to ever see. This is a rare move for many computer users. However, once you do it, there's no going back.

xboxrulz

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Gr33nN1nj4

Aug 20 2008, 08:29 PM

Yes it is secure as what happenes is this

First run 000000000000
2nd run 4gv3h904hgw4
4th run 000000000000
3rd run 32r98hg43g[34

and so forth, the reason i brought up encryption is that is one of the main causes people zero out their hard drive.

but beware this method takes a while to run then just running it once, which the NSA has said 32 times is best as most NON government software can't read that far down and they actually have to take the drive to the labs and take them apart to read that far

.

but the commands again (32times in 1 shot if i can recall my bash scripting)
NOTE: DO NOT RUN THIS IT WILL WIPE OUT YOUR HARD DRIVE BEYOND THE POINT OF RECOVERY

CODE

#!/bin/bash
$DRIVE = /dev/sda # change this to your hard drive you wanna erase
$COUNT = 0
while [ $COUNT -lt 16 ] : do
dd if=/dev/zero of=$DRIVE && dd if=/dev/urandom of=$DRIVE
COUNT = $[$COUNT+1]
done
dd count=1 bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=$DRIVE # erase the first 1megabyte to clear the MBR and partition table

EDIT:
save as blah.sh and and chmod +x it so you can run it, and run it as root and goto sleep and when you wake up it will be cleared.
(i had a guy double check the script for me) it will erase your hard drive 32 times and clear out the MDR and partations of any garbage the last urandom did

FirefoxRocks

Aug 20 2008, 02:56 AM

QUOTE(Gr33nN1nj4 @ Aug 17 2008, 05:33 PM)

(on topic of OP)
When I wipe hard drives, I use a live linux cd/floppy (a linux floppie should work as most of them will have dd and the device tree) and do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<hard drive> then collow it with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<hard drive>, I do that a couple of times esp if I am setting up a encrypted partition, that way if they try to look at the drive down some layers all they see is garbage or null bytes.

I'm sorry but that is much too confusing. Perhaps you could explain that more? I'm not trying to encrypt a partition here, and is the method you mentioned really secure?

Gr33nN1nj4

Aug 17 2008, 10:33 PM

levimage

Jul 16 2008, 10:07 PM

QUOTE(levimage @ Jul 16 2008, 04:06 PM)

Like the old LaserJet Printers... HP i believe. I remember them from back in my high school days. Also some Apple Laserwriters (the laser printers) as support adding SIMM(s). If you've ever asked someone who managed a computer lab with network laser printers or someone who ran a print shop back in the day, they'll tell you the same.

You might have to update the firmware on the NIC enabled printers for the printer to recognize the new amount of ram. Then upload the fonts you most commonly use.

levimage

Jul 16 2008, 10:06 PM

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