Hard disk erasing software

[flynclippr]

I need some software to erase entire hard disks securely. So far I've found the following utilities: Disk Wipe 2.0, Acronis Drive Cleanser 6.0, and East-Tec FormatSecure 1.5, but they all sound the same to me. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[manly]

Eraser

 

[flynclippr]

I'm looking for a utility that meets DoD standards. I can't seem to find out if this does.

 

[Gaunt]

BCWipe, found here, will meet DoD standards, or so they say.

By following the links on that page, you can download a fully functional version for evaluation purposes.

 

[flynclippr]

Eraser does support DoD 3 pass and 7 pass standards. US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306. / E, C and E). There's also a 35 pass algorithm, for those super paranoid people i guess. Thanks for your help guys.

edit: Does anyone know of something I could put on a floppy and boot with? It'd be easier if i didnt' need an OS. I gotta erase like 50 drives.

 

[Gaunt]

No idea on that one, but I'd be interested to hear the answer.

Really, a program like this should be fairly simple to write for some bored programmer out there... I'd take a stab at it, but I don't have the time on my hands at the moment. Just write over every byte on the drive each pass... although you'd have to figure out how read/write from the drive through hardware calls instead of through the regular methods so you could address every possible area of the disk... gotta be documents out there on how to do this.

But I digress...

 

[flynclippr]

I found this linux-based bootdisk that destroys all connected hard disks, but it says nothing about the algorithm used to destroy data or DoD.

Derik's Boot and Nuke

I also found this DOS based drive eraser:

Killdisk

My boss said he'd be willing to pay for a hard drive duplicator with the ability to erase hard drives. Something around $1000 or so would be ok.

 

[Toothpick]

need some software to erase entire hard disks securely

whats wrong with the usual FDISK ?

 

[Gaunt]

Toothpick: whats wrong with the usual FDISK ?

FDisk doesn't delete the data on the hard drive, it simply changes the partition tables and possibly boot record. If you were to use FDisk to erase a partition, there are a ton of HD forensic applications that could easily extract all the data that used to be on the drive.

DOD has apparently set out standards on how data is to be destroyed on a hard disk. Short of physically destroying the drive, this is done by writing over the data many times, so that there is no original data remaining. Not only do they seem to be worried about data, but possible magnetic residue of some sort on the drive. I guess maybe there's methods of reading data off a drive that's only been overwritten once or twice, cause they seem to like writing over it 7 times....

 

[scottrico]

Try switching to IBM hard drives, they self distruct in a few month after install, no need to clean them.

btw
If the police want to watch porn, tell them to download it themselves.

lol

Unless they want to see butt naked pictures of martha stuwart.
They will have to subpena me for that.

peace

 

[flynclippr]

Cool. The maker of Derik's Boot and Nuke emailed me back. DBAN uses the Peter Gutmann algorithm. That's the 35-pass one.

Gutmann's Paper on Secure Deletion of Data

I think this'll do.

 

[Toothpick]

FDisk doesn't delete the data on the hard drive, it simply changes the partition tables and possibly boot record. If you were to use FDisk to erase a partition, there are a ton of HD forensic applications that could easily extract all the data that used to be on the drive.

DOD has apparently set out standards on how data is to be destroyed on a hard disk. Short of physically destroying the drive, this is done by writing over the data many times, so that there is no original data remaining. Not only do they seem to be worried about data, but possible magnetic residue of some sort on the drive. I guess maybe there's methods of reading data off a drive that's only been overwritten once or twice, cause they seem to like writing over it 7 times....

Thanks, I never knew that

 

[Toothpick]

Btw, how long does this utility take to get the job done ? come to think of it, why would you want to use that anyway ?

 

[Toothpick]

Sorry for the questions BUT this thread has me thinking, I have use the standard FDisk for so long and now I find out that its not really effective...kinda weird !!

 

[flynclippr]

Btw, how long does this utility take to get the job done ? come to think of it, why would you want to use that anyway ?

I haven't tried DBAN yet, but some of the other ones i've tried took hours to do a 2.5 gig hd. Part of my job is scrapping old company computers. Hard drives need to be cleaned of sensitive company information before they can be reused within the company, donated to schools etc, or for me to take home to put in my servers .

 

[Toothpick]

but some of the other ones i've tried took hours to do a 2.5 gig hd.

Shhhhhhhhhhshh !! could you imagine how long it would take on todays huge HDDs

 

[Gaunt]

BCWipe estimated it was going to take almost 8 hours to wipe my 40GB drive with the DOD 7 pass option selected. I think it took about 6 hours, but I let it run overnight, so I'm not exactly sure, but that was my estimate based on how quickly it did 2 passes.

If you were doing 35 passes... it would take forever. BUT, nobody would be getting your data back.