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Wiping a drive

F

filip

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
2,611
Hi everyone,
Need help with deleting data off a HDD. Would like to sell it but I have no clue how to get rid of the data on it permanently (or close to permanently).
I can delete the partition but I heard that dose not clear data and it can still be accessed some how.
Can some one give me suggestions......

(heard of "fork bomb" but that seems like a bit much)

Thanks.
 
Google for DBAN. Or if you are in windows format the drive then use ccleaner wipe free space.
 
Ok, looked up DBAN and it seems ok, can I do the dod short (with 3 passes) or just go with the dod (7 passes)?
And dose the ccleaner actually wipe data? Can you please expand on this a little?

Thanks for your help.
 
To be honest 1 pass would be fine but go ahead and do 3. After the first pass your data is essentially destroyed outside of removing the platters and using highly expensive specialized equipment in a laboratory to try to read how strong the magnetic field for every single bit. I really doubt someone will spend tens of thousands to millions of dollars to try to recover data off some random person who is selling hard drives on some internet forum that is unless they know you have some government secret or something crazy like that..

And dose the ccleaner actually wipe data?
Click to expand...

CCleaner will wipe the free space on a hard drive using similar methods as DBAN. Although I would format the drive first so the entire drive is free.
 
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Thanks.... Have like 3 drives I need to wipe (two of those in the near future).
One of those drives is an ssd and a video on youtube said that DBAN is not good for a ssd.
Then I read this on a forum do you think it is ok?
Secure Erase:
Secure erase is where the SSD controller issues the ATA Securiy Erase Unit command that applies a voltage spike at a specific voltage to all of the NAND simultaneously flushing the stored electrons from the flash memory cells, thus cleaning the NAND. This in turn resets all the NAND cells on the SSD and leaves the drive's data in an unrecoverable state and at factory speeds.

Or could I try the cc cleaner method? (I don't want to ruin the ssd)

Again thanks for your help.
 
Secure Erase works on any ATA compliant (SATA/PATA) drive made in the last decade and is the preferred method for wiping drives (HDDs and SSD) in lieu of older block wipes (i.e. DBAN, free space wipes, etc). You can use Secure Erase with the erase drive tool in PartedMagic (which you can boot from Ultimate Boot CD) or you can use the HDDErase program (also on UBCD). Alternatively you can also invoke Secure Erase using the hdparm command but I would consider hdparm for advanced users only.

Secure Erase also has the advantage of being extremely fast in SSDs.

The erase tool in PartedMagic is pretty versatile. You can do a Secure Erase, or any of 4 flavors of block wipes (DBAN, dd, shred, and something else which I forget)
 
drescherjm said:
For SSDs you definitely want to use Secure Erase.



I have done that although it was somewhat more involved because of the security that tries to prevent accidental or malicious running of SE.

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
Click to expand...

I include hdparm for the sake of completeness, but yeah it is more involved than most users would probably want if they are just looking to SE a drive.

Personally I've been PartedMagic for all my SSD/HDD diagnostics/wipe/cloning needs and that is generally what I recommend as it isn't difficult to use (imo) and it's free.
 
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