"Destroying the evidence"

[Aquinus]

Or you can just buy a Mac and 35-Pass erase on the HD. To give you an idea how secure that is the DoD only uses a 7-pass for thier 5220-22 M standard.

You could also `dd` in linux to copy /dev/zero to your drive for 7 or more iterations.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

5220.22-M describes the 3-pass method for erasing:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsd/g/dod-5220-22-M.htm

No software erase method (5220.22-M included) is acceptable for any classified government documents under CSA provisions. Only degaussing is.

"35-pass" is aka Gutmann algorithm. It is not acceptable either for classified government documents.

 

[TheMailMan78]

5220.22-M describes the 3-pass method for erasing:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsd/g/dod-5220-22-M.htm

No software erase method (5220.22-M included) is acceptable for any classified government documents under CSA provisions. Only degaussing is.

"35-pass" is aka Gutmann algorithm. It is not acceptable either for classified government documents.

Its good enough to sell a drive on TPU and damn sure good enough to get past "iCare Recovery".

 

[sneekypeet]

Its good enough to sell a drive on TPU and damn sure good enough to get past "iCare Recovery".

Ever used iCare?

 

[TheMailMan78]

Ever used iCare?

No I'm smart enough to make backups.

 

[Aquinus]

No I'm smart enough to make backups.

Pro statement. Nothing like having a full backup to make you feel good about your system. I need to start my backups to my external drive again. RAID is great and all but there is nothing like having a second fallback. Nothing like a single point of failure to ruin your day.

 

[swaaye]

I'd go with the internal secure erase. It will erase some hidden areas, unlike a software solution like DBAN. Some drives support an enhanced secure erase too.

Or physically destroy the drive.

 

[bbmarley]

ccleaner has a drive wiper with options for 1 ,3 , 7 , 35 passes

very good freeware

 

[Aquinus]

dd has been dubbed "disk destroyer" for a reason.
Best of all, there are a million flavors of *nix that you can choose from where `dd` will do the same exact thing for free!

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Just replace 'X' with your drive.

 

[qubit]

That was more my point. Writing 0's or using software makes it only appear to be gone. If I can use another software to recover what was supposedly destroyed, it obviously isn't. I figured there had to be a way besides a shotgun or a hammer, but most HDD users don't have access to ways to truly remove the data, and again is why I don't sell my hard drives.

Thing is you're in an even more precarious position if you send it in for repair. Think about it, the drive dies, so you don't have a chance of wiping it in any way. At the most, you'll have a slightly damaged platter from a head crash, but it could just be a duff motor bearing or logic board, with perfect platters.

The manufacturer fixes the drive and all that lovely data is then available to be read, in the clear. While they probably don't routinely read user's drives, the fact they can is an unsettling thought and would make me think twice before claiming on the warranty, especially if it was one of my data drives.

 

[sneekypeet]

No I'm smart enough to make backups.

so how are you damn sure you can beat it?
I suggest you type about what you know and stop guessing at things

As for being smart enough to do a backup, I assume that is after every piece of art you create? What happens when your drive "dies" tomorrow and your last week or so of work is on that drive. Unless you are backing up every day you smart enough to backup comment is strangely not sufficient.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

No software erase method (5220.22-M included) is acceptable for any classified government documents under CSA provisions. Only degaussing is.

"35-pass" is aka Gutmann algorithm. It is not acceptable either for classified government documents.

Id do it the american way and use one of these babys...

Spoiler

http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/rifle/M107/M107_1.jpg

Unfortunately I will be arrested and charged with illegal use of firearms and posession of a firearm once the police hear the shot as civilians arent allowed to carry firearms here

Just send it my way, I won't miss.

We had a large pile of hard drives to dump... EOD was nice enough to include them in a 2000 pounder a few weeks ago.


BOOM! No more datas.

 

[TheMailMan78]

so how are you damn sure you can beat it?
I suggest you type about what you now and stop guessing at things

As for being smart enough to do a backup, I assume that is after every piece of art you create? What happens when your drive "dies" tomorrow and your last week or so of work is on that drive. Unless you are backing up every day you smart enough to backup comment is strangely not sufficient.

1. Because I have seen drives wiped this way sent to recover companies that got back zero usable data. Companies that specialize in data recovery like data carving. Yet a 70 dollar program can do what they cannot? Ill be sure to write my boss in the morning and let him know about this magical software!

2. I make daily backups of my work. Its good practice if you are a professional. My time is far more valuable then spending a day trying to recover a botched overclock attempt that corrupted my raid or something.

 

[Steevo]

I have a couple magnets out of older hard drives that are extremely powerful. A few spins of the platters under the magnet in close proximity and a windows installation and some test files I put on were gone, and a few changes of orientation and on both sides, I was unable to find recovery software that worked.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I have bought used drives from TPU before, and just out of necessity of the drive beginning to fail, I had to run recovery software on a drive that was previously wiped before I received it. When recovering my files off of a 320GB drive that I doubt was ever completely full, the software recovered 420GB of info from the drive. That information was all of my last OS data and looked to include images, tags, and various information from my and the previous six OS installs.

I don't believe there is a way to totally destroy the information on a platter, I also keep my drives or destroy them when I am done using them or if they break along the way.

What you're saying is very bizarre. You'd of thought one of these articles would mention that the hypothetical electron microscope scan is now outdone by the drive heads themselves. Sounds to me like only quick formats were used. Though that only covers half the picture. There should never be more data recovered than the max size of the drive unless the program produced a lot of useless gibberish data. What was the total size of intact files?

 

[GSquadron]

Best way to destroy evidence is to trash your hard drive after you format it.
None will be interested in your data anyway.

 

[acerace]

Dip the HDD with all kind of very flammable liquids, kerosene for example, and watch it burn like the man who found fire.

 

[Jetster]

Cracks me up how some of you are coming up with 100 ways to destroy a drive. Pretty self centered, you really think someone is going to piece a drive back together to get your porn history and some random lame web page code? Really Personally I cant get myself to destroy hardware. Ill keep selling my drives

 

[Aquinus]

Cracks me up how some of you are coming up with 100 ways to destroy a drive. Pretty self centered, you really think someone is going to piece a drive back together to get your porn history and some random lame web page code? Really Personally I cant get myself to destroy hardware. Ill keep selling my drives

I think people are more concerned about documents that were on their computer that might have personal information on them. I think most people won't care if someone else know what kind of porn that people whack their junk to.

 

[newtekie1]

Then we have to agree to disagree. My suggestion is to try it, or wipe a drive and send it to me and I will see if I can pull any information.

Ok, I tried it, the drive wiped using my method of writing random data once then writting all 0s resulting in iCure not being able to recover a single thing from the drive, as I figured.

So now my suggestion to you is to try it, as it seems you have made some assumptions when doing this yourself. Use DBAN, do a round of PRNG, then do a round of Quick-Erase, then try iCure. I bet you won't be able to recover anything. And just for fun, since you are so sure iCure is able to recover data from a drive wiped in this manner, throw some important files on there that you don't have backed up first.

What you're saying is very bizarre. You'd of thought one of these articles would mention that the hypothetical electron microscope scan is now outdone by the drive heads themselves. Sounds to me like only quick formats were used. Though that only covers half the picture. There should never be more data recovered than the max size of the drive unless the program produced a lot of useless gibberish data. What was the total size of intact files?

That is the issue with programs like iCure. They search the drive for the file headers, and when they find them they report the file as being there. The file header contains the size the file should be. So when iCure finds a file header for a 3MB file, it reports that it found a 3MB file. However, it doesn't actually check to see if the file is actually in tact. So it can find a file header that says the file is 3MB, but only 4KB of the file might actually be there. That is why it can "find" more data than the drive can actually hold. Parts of the drive have been used multiple times, so the old data is gone, but iCure still thinks it is there.

And yes, it definitely sounds like these drives that were "wiped" were really just formatted. It could have been quick or full, it doesn't really matter though. Even a full format only touches a small fraction of the data.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Ok, I tried it, the drive wiped using my method of writing random data once then writting all 0s resulting in iCure not being able to recover a single thing from the drive, as I figured.



That is the issue with programs like iCure. They search the drive for the file headers, and when they find them they report the file as being there. The file header contains the size the file should be. So when iCure finds a file header for a 3MB file, it reports that it found a 3MB file. However, it doesn't actually check to see if the file is actually in tact. So it can find a file header that says the file is 3MB, but only 4KB of the file might actually be there. That is why it can "find" more data than the drive can actually hold. Parts of the drive have been used multiple times, so the old data is gone, but iCure still thinks it is there.

And yes, it definitely sounds like these drives that were "wiped" were really just formatted. It could have been quick or full, it doesn't really matter though. Even a full format only touches a small fraction of the data.

Of course you couldn't find anything. Thats the whole point of wrtting zeros. But hey some people like to live in bubbles and think a format is a "wipe".

 

[CounterZeus]

When I worked for the Belgian government, I used darik's boot and nuke.

 

[eidairaman1]

Killdisk

 

[scoutingwraith]

I usually disassemble my hard drive and take out the platters. I used to do it for fun but now i tend to do it if i have documents i dont want to be recovered.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I usually disassemble my hard drive and take out the platters. I used to do it for fun but now i tend to do it if i have documents i dont want to be recovered.

are you that embarrassed about the sex tapes you made?