HDD Wipe help

[Matt1178]

Hi,

I need to wipe a hdd with a 35 x pass. I'm looking for a freeware tool which is capable of doing this but which also produces an archived report detailing whats been done. The only one I know which does this is activekill disk. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[PBComputer]

There is a iso which can be booted from cd called dban which will do it. Can't find a link at the moment.



Paul

 

[seedubya]

Hi,

I need to wipe a hdd with a 35 x pass. I'm looking for a freeware tool which is capable of doing this but which also produces an archived report detailing whats been done. The only one I know which does this is activekill disk. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

http://www.dban.org/

From a purely technical point of view this is ridiculous.

 

[Kitten Kong]

35 passes!!. Sheesh, it would be far easier to destroy the drive yourself, with a drill press. Not to mention a damned site faster.

 

[SilverLeaf]

35 passes!!. Sheesh, it would be far easier to destroy the drive yourself, with a drill press. Not to mention a damned site faster.

Yeah, this is going to take a really long time. Destroying the drive would indeed be a lot easier.

 

['putertutor]

Is there a reason for the insanity of 35 passes??

 

[JustInspired]

Why indeed? I suppose it's some protocol that must be followed.
I prefer Secure Erase which is a feature built into most modern drives and is easily accessed with a Parted Magic boot CD.

 

[angry_geek]

I started an 8 pass scrub on a 1tb drive just for kicks. It says it will be done Friday morning.

 

[Xander]

No set opinion of my own but I came across this not too long ago:

http://techlogon.com/2012/07/07/securely-erase-a-hard-drive-dban-may-not-be-sufficient/

 

[SilverLeaf]

Why indeed? I suppose it's some protocol that must be followed.
I prefer Secure Erase which is a feature built into most modern drives and is easily accessed with a Parted Magic boot CD.

Absolutely! I can't say enough good things about Parted Magic. it's one of my favorite tools.

If anyone really wants to read up on this issue, here's a fairly comprehensive document (pdf):

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcmrr.ucsd.edu%2Fpeople%2FHughes%2FDataSanitizationTutorial.pdf

 

[codegreen]

Given that the OP needs a report, I'm guessing the 35 passes is required by the client.

 

[TimJacobs]

Given that the OP needs a report, I'm guessing the 35 passes is required by the client.

Thanks. Filler.........

 

[MobileTechie]

I didn't realise they'd put secure erase on Parted Magic - that's good news.

It's depressing to think that this purely theorectical and out-dated 35 pass Guttman BS is still doing the rounds given that there are cash prizes on offer for anyone able to retrieve data from a modern drive with just a single overwrite and nobody has ever won it.

 

[PCS]

+1 for Parted Magic

I think Scott Moulton of My myharddrivedied.com / podnutz said that 1 pass is sufficient to prevent data recovery.

 

[seedubya]

Yep. So much for actual real world results.
Also that article http://techlogon.com/2012/07/07/securely-erase-a-hard-drive-dban-may-not-be-sufficient/ quoted earlier.

Theoretically correct but really? Recovering meaningful data from bad sectors? C'mon.....

 

[Xander]

But "bad sector" is not necessarily the same as "overwritten good sector".