Questions tagged [wipe]
The wipe tag has no usage guidance.
22
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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 ...
42
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5
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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?
8
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8
answers
5k
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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-...
3
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6
answers
2k
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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 ...
91
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9
answers
49k
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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 ...
43
votes
5
answers
37k
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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 ...
24
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7
answers
23k
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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-...
3
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5
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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 ...
4
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9
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43k
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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 ...
4
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2
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5k
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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 ...
16
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6
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88k
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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.
15
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3
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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 ...
7
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3
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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), ...
5
votes
7
answers
16k
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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 ...
5
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3
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2k
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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 ...
4
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1
answer
2k
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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 ...
3
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2
answers
2k
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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 ...
3
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1
answer
7k
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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 ...
1
vote
2
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6k
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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 ...
1
vote
2
answers
287
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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? ...
0
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2
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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 '...
0
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2
answers
224
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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 ...