need to delete files FOR EVER. I know about(window washer)need suggestions.Readmyplan

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chronic9

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I have to delete some files permanently on a few hard drives and back those files up before writing zeros to em. I was thinking of copying the files down to a portable HDD or burning them to a CD. But then i thought that the CD burning would leave traces somewhere like in a log file or something of that nature. So i guess ill drag em down to a 4 gig scsi i have in my closet. Then I would use window washer and do the NSA standard of 27 passes i think. After wards I would use some sort of undelete software to check if they could be recovered or not. AND THEN i would uninstall the software used to do all these things and run a registry cleaner to clean out all possible traces.

sounds very paranoid, no?

Hows that plan sound?
 
maybe you should just make the drive(s) the data is on now the back up drive and buy a new hard disk for the system. might prove to be far more time effective
 
as a financial institution, we DESTROY our drives at end of life. haha, fun times with hammers, AK's, the works :D
 
That's pretty much the safe way to do it.

You can rewrite the disk with 0's all you want, theres always a chance. If you cant take that chance, destroy the disk beyond all repair.

If I was going to rewrite a disk with 0's, I'd do it a lot more than 27 times.
 
hammers are very good, people come to me that want data destroyed, and i take my hammer out and smash the drives, they look at me like WTH
 
Grind each drive into a powder down to a cornstarch consistancey. the pour all the powdered drives together, then melt the powder down and pour the molten metal into several small ingots.
 
anyone ever watch quigly down under (sp?)
he had this badass 10 gauge shotgun
do that a few times
then the melting
that should do it
 
Destroying disks are pretty extreme if you ask me. I've done some computer forensics for law enforcement and I can say that the wiping utilities should get the job done. It all depends on what you are trying to protect your data from.

If you are worried about someone taking your hard drive and using undelete programs or forensics software (Encase, FTK, etc.) then a 1 wipe pass will render these useless. From a software stand point, the data that you wrote over becomes inaccessible - practically nonexistent. Multiple wipes don't really change much when protecting from the programs I mentioned. This is because the system only sees the current value of each bit, including free and unused disk space.

When dealing with Magnetic Force Microscopy (or other kinds of "hardware" forensics) this is a different story. When I say practically nonexistent, I mean that software cannot determine previous states of a bit but technology such as MFM can. This is possible due to inconsistencies in the writing of magnetic data to the disk. Basically, the 1s and 0s that get written to a certain part of the disk do not precisely overwrite the old value. These offset values can be detected with certain equipment because of the magnetic traces left behind. So in this case, the more passes you perform, the harder it will be to retreive the data.

The "hardware" forensics method is extremely expensive and time consuming. You won't find this sort of thing at your local police department I can tell you that. My explanation of how this works is simplified and dumbed down, but here is a good read to anyone interested in learning more: http://wipe.sourceforge.net/secure_del.html
Gutmann's paper goes into a lot of detail, and is a classic when dealing with the secure deletion of data.
 
People spend thousands of dollars on shrink visits. I bash and throw dead PC hardware. Two birds with one stone. :D
 
IceWind said:
People spend thousands of dollars on shrink visits. I bash and throw dead PC hardware. Two birds with one stone. :D
Click to expand...

OK who else is thinking office space where Bolton is putting the beat down on that printer with the song in the background going "Die m*ther f*cker Die"

ROFL

My solution to avoid shrink visits is slightly different, I take my motorcycle to the track. Whens the last time you saw a motorcycle parked in front of a shrinks office?
 
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