Category: Geeks r Us
I'm thinking of selling some of my machines but really need to be sure that my information is completely deleted from them before I do so. I've heard that merely reformatting a drive isn't enough, and I've seen several computers on sale where they talk about professionally wiping the hard drive and sometimes reinstalling a clean version of an operating system. So what is the best way for me to clean a hard drive short of destroying it? I want to be able to sell these machines with one in them so that I can get more money for them. Would magnets work, and if so, are they dangerous to use since they would need to be far stronger than those used on tapes? If that's the case, is there some kind of software that I could use as an alternative? Thanks.
there is some software, but from what i've been able to learn you need sighted help with it. don't remember the name of the software someone once suggested, but it can completely destroy all data on a hard drive, even write over it to make sure it can never be recovered. Take in to consideration, this takes time to do, the more you try to destroy data the longer it takes.
That's fine. So long as it's fully destroyed so that I can feel confident in selling it, I don't mind. *smile*
when i mean time, i mean by what setting you choose. it could be anyware from 5 minutes, to like 5 hours depending on how much you want it to try and destroy data. a note i've learned, usually just the first level of destroying data does enough, meaning it goes through and over writes the disc with zeros so all the data is gone.
Thanks for the tip. I wonder why they have the other settings then? I guess it's for really high security users? Anyway, I need to look out for that software.
think of it as a military or a business getting rid of info. there are programs out there that can get little bits of data, and say if you ran something that had a lot of bank accounts all you'd need is a little of a bank account's number. that's where the really strong erasing comes in, so there's no chance at all that data can be extracted.
That certainly makes sense. Still, I wouldn't want anyone getting my information. Granted, I don't use any special software for it as I'm sure they do, but hackers are smart and can probably do some kind of search for something like "credit/debit card" or "bank". So it's always better safe than sorry.
think honestly here. most hackers that would be that picky, steal the machine themselves. most users, even the advanced ones, don't have the money or resourses to get this software. it costs lots and lots of money, not to mention you need computers with massive amounts of power to even work them on a basic level.
Ah, gotcha. Torrenting is one thing, but if it requires that kind of power, forget it. Something basic should be fine. *smile*
Hi,
A free program comes to mind, called eraser.
However, do exercise extreme caussion when using these types of programs.
Oh yes, and another one that I know of, which you can use in a trial, but must be paid for to use after a certain period is called O&O safe erase.
Gee, that one is able to erase a partition containing the operating system.
First program I found that is able to do such a thing.
Regards,
This may sound silly but why must I use caution when using these programs if my intent is to delete everything? Can they actually do harm to the drive or make it unwritable?
Hi,
Well, if you erasing the whole drive that's fine,
I just looked at it from a point of view where one would have more than one drive in a system. Or perhaps have an external drive plugged in,
So, I was just reminding that you make sure you know which drive it is that you're targetting, that you have your files backed up, etc.
I know you're not silly to disregard all that info, but was just saying to be careful.
Regards,
Since parts of this topic are utter bullshit, I'll throw in some facts.
First, what you want is to write random stuff to the drive. Just writing zeros through once won't do you a damned bit of good, and I could probably pull it off with a netbook given enough time. If someone really wants to poke at your drive, they create an image of the entire thing. so you have two options. 1) boot with a GRML live cd, and do something like this:
dd if=/dev/urandom of/dev/sda
that will do a single pass. if you want more you can either get a program that will do it (use apt-cache search), or just chain those together. A fully erased drive usually uses about 36 passes, I would use about 8.
Essentially this is how this works. Your harddrive (the mechanical ones, not the USB keys/SSD drives) are platter-disks, which means that they run off of two platters spinning around within that enclosure. A needle (the drive head) bounces back and forth reading things, and the entire platter (on both sides of each I think), which means that when you erase there are ways to pull up the shadow of the data. Now writing urandoms (random bytes a couple times) would be enough.
I've never heard of GRML but will look it up as well as the program mentioned. Thanks.
If you link your computer to the mac, and use disc utility, you can iether zero over once, seven times, or thirty-five times. I think that a seven-over erase would be fine. Not exactly sure about connecting the drive to the mac, though.
I didn't think it was possible to link an XP machine with the Mac. Hmm. That certainly sounds interesting.
how about
in a linux shell script:
#endless loop
while [ 1+2=3 ]
do
#secure erase
shred /*
mkdir /etc
echo "11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111">/etc/tas.conf
done
If you need help getting linux, feel free to PM me.
uh. no. that script has problems and there are better ways to do it.
You could theoretically pull out the harddrive on the xp box, stick it in an enclosure and use disk utility to do your work, but just booting up with a program would do the trick, or using Linux.
I'm really looking for an easy yet sure solution to the problem, particularly if I need sighted assistance. I don't know anyone in person who's really good with computers and know no one who uses Linux. If, for some reason, I do this to my Thinkpad X32, then i don't want to delete the partition with the os installed, as I'd like to reinstall things back to their factory settings before selling it. If I do it to the desktop, then it doesn't matter, as I would be deleting the whole thing and there's no such partition. So are the Erase and O&O Safe Erase programs accessible or would I need help with them.
Hi,
I've used both programs without a hitch.
Note: eraser, doesn't erase partition/volume containing your OS.
Just a tip for O&O, if you want to delete a partition, go to computer/my computer rather than in the program, it makes it alot easier and you'll be sure to select the right partition/volume as there are options to erase once you've selected the partition/volume under computer/myComputer.
If you're erasing a volume containing your os, the computer will restart, and O&o will begin to erase the partition, which can take quite a long time.
Myself, I got impatient with the process and restarted while it was doing its thing,
and after that short bit of erasing, I didn't have any partitions on the drive.
I was using a test drive so that didn't matter.
I just repartitioned the drive to use it again.
My main aim with using O&o safe erase was to see if it could infact do what it said it could do, meaning, could it really erase a volume containing an OS?
since to my knowledge, no program can do that which is created for windows.
Regards,
Or you could take a hammer, put a crack in it, and drop that sommabitch in the river. Trust me, with all the natural minerals and available pollutants, there's bound to be some fast-acting corosion going on, plus it can keep company with all the tires, dog turds and other paraphernalia down there.
Just a friendly misguided suggestion for a Friday afternoon after a long week; don't do it else you'll be getting a well-deserved several-hundred-dollar citation if caught.