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If I format all my drivers c,d,e,f and then make a truecrypt volumes equal to drive size then delete it 'the voulme' will that make the old data unrecoverable ex. d:= 30g i use truecrypt to make 30g volume on d then delete it. and at the end do the same on the free space at for windows drive c:

how secure this way, i dont want to use any programs as I dont trust it any way so I want to do it manual

Edit: I'll do all this before selling it, so no one would recover my personal stuff.

illsecure
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  • Your question is extremely vague. What are you trying to do? – Polynomial Nov 15 '12 at 08:28
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    vague? really, all I said if I fill my hard disk with truecrypt volumes to make original data unrecoverable, would that work or not. more simple will that prevent anyone from recover old data or not? – illsecure Nov 15 '12 at 08:42
  • Perhaps I wasn't clear. I was confused as to why you were using TC to shred your disk instead of a shredding tool - it made the question confusing as a whole. – Polynomial Nov 15 '12 at 09:04
  • @Polynomial, I like to do things manual thats all. – illsecure Nov 15 '12 at 09:10
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    That's not a secure way to do it. TC isn't guaranteed to wipe all sectors - there may be metadata left in the NTFS journal or other areas of the disk that aren't occupied by file data. – Polynomial Nov 15 '12 at 09:12
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    Just to be clear: You want to fill your hard disk with the pseudorandomness of encrypted data to make it impossible to analyse what was once on the disk? Wouldn't just iterations of `dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda` be easier? – Henning Klevjer Nov 15 '12 at 09:49
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    @HenningKlevjer Or the [`shred`](http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?shred+1) command. – Polynomial Nov 15 '12 at 09:59

3 Answers3

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If you want to destroy all data on your disk, why not use a file shredding tool? There are plenty of them available, and it is a lot easier solution that creating a truecrypt volume and then deleting that volume.

I also don't know how truecrypt initializes volumes. It is possible that truecrypt writes random data to the volume only once, while file shredding software can (and should) do multiple passes, making the chance of recovering data even smaller.

Wouter
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  • but if the drive all full no free space at all, will be anyway to recover old files? – illsecure Nov 15 '12 at 09:17
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    @illsecure The available file space on a filesystem isn't equal to the total size of the physical disk. Certain sectors contain metadata, e.g. NTFS journal, which might be used to retrieve tiny fragments of files or at least some file names and creation / modified dates. When you write data to a filesystem, you're at the mercy of the implementation as to whether everything is overwritten. A good example of this is wear levelling on SSDs. A proper shredder wipes at the physical level (sector level) and will remove all traces of data. – Polynomial Nov 15 '12 at 10:32
  • thanks to all, 'll read a little more about shredding tools. – illsecure Nov 16 '12 at 04:56
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This question has been asked before, see here. The quick answer is that you're better off using a data shredding tool rather than trying to use encryption.

Community
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GdD
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Yes, you can. Of course you can.

But it will take longer than a shredding software.

mostly because you'll have to manually do all the steps of launching multiple time the disk encryption.

it should work with full-partition encrypt but I would not trust it.

You should use Full disk encryption (empty HDD without partition). you encrypt with a password, then with another password then again and again as much as you'll need. (I'll say 3 time is more then enough).

You'll have a cleaned hard drive, all data wiped, unrecoverable.

Kindred's Kaiser
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