Windows App To Nuke Drive

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vraa

Gawd
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Mar 20, 2007
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I have one week to destroy a thousand drives with 15 PCs

What app would you use to just write random data, or 1,s or 0's with minimum 7 times?
 
Need Windows because I cannot restart or use any other OS for this requirement :(
 
What Windows? Vista and 7 (Server 2008 and 2008R2) would be sufficient for most needs using SLOW FORMAT which zeroes every sector. This does not work for XP and older (Server 2000/2003)!
Secure deletion: a single overwrite will do it

The myth that to delete data really securely from a hard disk you have to overwrite it many times, using different patterns, has persisted for decades, despite the fact that even firms specialising in data recovery, openly admit that if a hard disk is overwritten with zeros just once, all of its data is irretrievably lost.

Craig Wright, a forensics expert, claims to have put this legend finally to rest. He and his colleagues ran a scientific study to take a close look at hard disks of various makes and different ages, overwriting their data under controlled conditions and then examining the magnetic surfaces with a magnetic-force microscope. ....
Click to expand...
Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it
 
So then do a full format on the drives. I assume you have AHCI enabled or are using ESATA or an external so that you can hot swap the drives out.
 
If it's a drive that Windows can see, just use CCleaner - it has a secure wipe feature. Partition/format the drive in question then point CCleaner to it for a zero pass secure erase, you're done. It wipes the free space on the drive (and since it'll be formatted, that means all of it) with several methods but anything over a single zero pass is really a waste of time.
 
Much lower cost to simply damage the drives.

Much faster to just destroy the file tables.

No data (that any of us has access to) is worth reconstructing data with the file tables missing.
 
You should use Active Killdisk for Windows. Your biggest hurdle will be the number of PC's. With only 15 machines, you will need multiple SATA ports or something similar to wipe the drives simultaneously in order to satisfy the time/drive requirements. Definitely do sequential write (not random) with verification disabled to speed up the process.

Truthfully, you should just get a degauser or physically destroy the drive. Is this a requirement for your current job, or a contract you are bidding on? You can also hire an outside firm to securely destroy the data. This will help satisfy any auditing requirements and keep your ass off the hook if their is a data leak.
 
If the systems support Secure Erase (it's been an ATA standard for years, but it's often disabled to prevent accidental/virus wiping of your entire drive), that's the best way. It's built into the drive, so you don't need to push tons of data over the interface to the drive, which should make it slightly faster (though it does still have to overwrite the whole drive so it will inherently take a while). It can also access parts of the disk that standard writes can't, so it's more thorough too.

I understand the regulations and stuff (I work in IT in the financial sector), but nobody has proven yet that a single pass of 0 overwrites can be recovered from.
 
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