Questions tagged [wipe]

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34 votes
5 answers
35k views

Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary?

To stupid people, like me, you would have thought overwriting each bit on a disk would render the data completely unrecoverable. Why do disk wiping tools have the option for multiple passes, i.e. 3 ...
Kez's user avatar
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42 votes
5 answers
113k views

Is it possible to wipe SSD with strong magnetic force?

I know it is possible to wipe a hard disk, but I'm wondering if something similar can be done to SSD disks as well?
bbaja42's user avatar
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8 votes
8 answers
5k views

How to wipe a USB hard drive

I have a USB hard drive that I'm planning on donating. Before I donate it, however, I want to be sure that it has been completely and unrecoverably wiped of personal information. Darik's Boot-and-...
Kevin Lacquement's user avatar
3 votes
6 answers
2k views

Securely format a hard drive [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Erasing data before selling a computer I have just taken 8 old 250gb drives out of one of our servers. I need to securely wipe all the data on these drives, before they are ...
alex's user avatar
  • 493
91 votes
9 answers
49k views

How can I wipe a broken hard disk drive before sending it back to the manufacturer for maintenance?

The hard drive of my laptop died, the manufacturer wants me to send it so that they can investigate, but I'm concerned that the drive might contain sensitive information. When I say the drive is ...
Brann's user avatar
  • 1,385
43 votes
5 answers
37k views

How can I securely wipe an SSD? [duplicate]

One of our clients is asking for DOD-7 Pass Erase method for SSD's. We tried wiping an SSD 256 GB (Samsung Make) via Tabernus lan, but it's taking too much time. Please guide me how to wipe the SSD ...
Baskar Kumar's user avatar
24 votes
7 answers
23k views

zero fill vs random fill

Many tutorials suggest that i should fill a disk with /dev/urandom instead of /dev/zero if i want it to be unrecoverable. But I don't quite get it, how can a disk still be recoverable after being zero-...
Waleed Hamra's user avatar
3 votes
5 answers
11k views

How to quickly and effectively wipe a Win7 x64 hard drive

I have a Windows 7 Enterprise x64 system and need to wipe the 1.5TB hard disk drive quickly and effectively. Quick, I guess, is a relative term; so more quickly than I've seen with some wipe utilities ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 1,297
4 votes
9 answers
43k views

How to reset an NTFS MFT for no tracks of deleted files names to be found there?

When a file is deleted from the hard drive and the free space it used to occupy is securely overwritten (wiped), recovery tools can still usually find the file was there and show its name. As far as I ...
Ivan's user avatar
  • 7,523
4 votes
2 answers
5k views

Checking if any data exists on a presumably empty storage device

So, say you've completed a full pass of: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M Then, you'd like to make sure the destination has been really zeroed out (ignoring the confirmation messages from dd and ...
XXL's user avatar
  • 1,469
16 votes
6 answers
88k views

how long to zero a drive with dd? [closed]

How long will it take to zero fill 1TB (using dd dev/zero)? I'm actually doing two 500G drive simultaneously if it matters.
Miles Marley's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
38k views

Complete wiping of hard drive - shred, wipe or dd?

I need to wipe all data of a number of hard drives, from Ubuntu Linux. I have found three command line tools: shred, wipe and dd. It seems kind of random what people recommend. Sometimes someone ...
Mads Skjern's user avatar
  • 1,479
7 votes
3 answers
9k views

Zeroing a file from command-line

Is there a built-in command in Windows 7 or higher to fill a file with zero / NULL bytes? The processing should happen in-place (i.e. it should modify the actual disk sectors / bytes of the file), ...
Basj's user avatar
  • 1,809
5 votes
7 answers
16k views

Disk wiping other than DBAN

Sometimes using DBAN takes several days to wipe a disk. What alternatives do you have experience with that work within a few hours and offer the simplicity of DBAN? I am mainly interested in free ...
rodey's user avatar
  • 1,870
5 votes
3 answers
2k views

how to restore windows 7 to a know working state every time it boots

A couple of days ago my mother asked me to set up a computer at her house, she wants to use it to basic web browsing, video chat and nothing more. The problem is, neither my mother nor my sister know ...
Artanis's user avatar
  • 71
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is there a faster way to verify that a drive has been fully zeroed?

In the coming months, I'm going to need to zero out a lot of disks. After wiping each drive, I need a quick way of making sure that the drive has been completely filled with zeroes. I could open each ...
Hashim Aziz's user avatar
  • 12.8k
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Securely erase empty disk space on a Win 3.1 / DOS 6.22 system with builtin tools

I have a retro laptop from 1994, an IBM Thinkpad 340, which I want to give away, but first want to securely erase its deleted files. The system contains both a GUI and CLI undelete application, which ...
porg's user avatar
  • 369
3 votes
1 answer
7k views

How strong of a magnet would be needed to mess up this hardware?

I just bought a magnetic dry erase board that also came with 2 small magnets. I intend to carry these items everyday in my backpack alongside my laptops and my phone. Some days, I will have my Lenovo ...
whatwhatwhat's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
6k views

Why does dd give me an error at the end of zero-writing a disk?

I'm running Cygwin on Windows 7. I was using the following dd command to securely erase a 1TB mechanical disk: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde bs=4M status=progress About 2 and a half hours into the ...
Hashim Aziz's user avatar
  • 12.8k
1 vote
2 answers
287 views

Is my laptop wiped?d the drive c, and then set up a recovery partition so I could sell the laptop

I took my laptop to a computer store to be wiped before reselling. The owner wrote in the comments section that he wiped the drive C using DOD and set up a recovery partition. Does this sound right? ...
Marquise's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
328 views

Program to wipe HD? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Securely format a hard drive How to wipe a USB hard drive What is a freeware app i can use to wipe a HD? I have two 1) My external which is <1yr old and is reported '...
user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
224 views

What marks data as deleted - the hard drive or the filesystem?

Anyone with a cursory understanding of data recovery and sanitisation as it relates to hard drives is aware of the concept that data "permanently" deleted from within an operating system is not ...
Hashim Aziz's user avatar
  • 12.8k