Secure Formatting Disks

Question

I heard about people that used tools to recover deleted data and found a lot of unusual data, that after discovered that the their brand new pc in truth was used...

When discarding HD's, as sysadmin, we need be sure that the data in disk is unrecoverable.

Do you know some tool to safely format the hd then the data cannot be restored? As usual, free is better.

You question title is not very specific – Eddie May 04 '09 at 15:53 — Eddie, May 04 '09 at 15:53
Duplicate of several threads already on here. – Brian Knoblauch May 06 '09 at 19:27 — Brian Knoblauch, May 06 '09 at 19:27

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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See: Sugestions for cleansing PC's before recycling / disposal

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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answered May 04 '09 at 05:37

C. K. Young

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Nice, but my question is a bit more specific. – Click Ok May 04 '09 at 05:50
If you read some of the top answers (especially my one! :-P), you'll see that they adequately address your question too. :-) – C. K. Young May 04 '09 at 06:22
or see http://serverfault.com/questions/959/how-should-i-securely-wipe-data-from-a-hard-drive – Hamish Downer May 04 '09 at 10:46

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 06 '09 at 19:25

http://www.dban.org/

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

It does a good enough job. Like jldugger said it's enough to write 0s to the drive, you could always smash it with a hammer and take out some frustration about "that one user" shrug

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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Also see How should I securely wipe data from a hard drive?

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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answered May 04 '09 at 10:50

Hamish Downer

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered May 14 '09 at 15:16

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Use the free Eraser software to securely remove sensitive data from your hard drive. You can even choose the data wiping algorithm and the strength of the erase making it almost impossible to recover your data.

answered May 14 '09 at 15:16

Robin Rodricks

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered May 04 '09 at 06:36

You would do well to read the Epilogue to Gutemann's publication "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory". The gist is that recovering data isn't possible on newer technology, so just write zeros to the drive and call it a day, or use Gutemann's tool to satisfy the tin-foil crowd.

Alex Bolotov · Answer 6 · 2010-10-19T22:51:19.780

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MHDD ERASE commadd. MHDD is also good tool for remap, fix drive, etc.
shred /dev/[yourdevice]
1. shred is a part of GNU coreutils (in Windows it can be used as a part of cygwin).
2. Individual files can't be shredded totally securely on journaling filesystems, though.
3. If you are shedding the device make sure to shred journal as well (journal can be stored on separate device).

edited Oct 19 '10 at 22:51

answered May 06 '09 at 20:33

Alex Bolotov

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most people that uses OS'es these days use journaled file systems, which the shred utility itself says it is of limited use for... – Steen Oct 12 '10 at 21:40

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 08 '09 at 02:00

As the others have said, writing zeroes should be sufficient. You can also write random data, or do a secure wipe, if you're really paranoid.

Someone wrote an open challenge to anyone who could recover data from a drive that was overwritten with zeroes, and also contacted 3 data recovery firms for the challenge: http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted

The article includes a paraphrased conversation with someone at one of the data recovery firms contacted for the challenge:

"According to our Unix team, there is less than a zero percent chance of data recovery after that dd command. The drive itself has been overwritten in a very fundamental manner. However, if for legal reasons you need to demonstrate that an effort is being made to recover some or all of the data, go ahead and send it in and we'll certainly make an effort, but again, from what you've told us, our engineers are certain that we cannot recover data from the drive. We'll email you a quote."

Secure Formatting Disks

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