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Does anybody know of a way to erase hard drives from the hard drive? Without anything else? EG. I have a windows 10 pc and would like to wipe the hard drive as-is, with no boot key/disk and while running either the OS on the HDD or BIOS?
Legorooj
Posted 2019-06-22T17:56:42.537
Reputation: 111
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Ideally you'd want to boot to a CD/DVD that has a better toolset available than Windows provides. Such as a Live FreeBSD disk that had dd. Linux also provides both -- Live "spins", and dd. But you indicate that is not an option you're interested in.
You could use a degausser, or a magnet. But this method is a bit extreme, and while it would be theoretically possible to retrieve some data from the disk afterwards with forensic tools. The odds anyone would even try, or even so, get anything of value. Is slim to none.
Speaking of dd; there also exists a copy of that tool available for Windows. Also called dd. It's available here. While it appears to only provide a subset of the original. Looking at the information on the page, it appears that it will provide everything you need to accomplish your task.
While Windows provides the tools to wipe (delete, format, ...) the disk. Given that a disk provides a backup table for both the GPT layout, as well as the MBR layout. These standard windows tools are unsuitable. As Fdisk must be run twice in order to wipe (rewrite) the backup copy. So once you've used it to rewrite the table. You won't have a copy of the command available to execute again.
somebody
Posted 2019-06-22T17:56:42.537
Reputation: 420
Would you be able to mount a Live FreeBSD OS on a partition on the hard drive, and boot into it and use it to wipe the windows partition? – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T20:23:05.867
Sure. Assuming that you mean install BSD to a partition, boot it, then wipe the drive. – somebody – 2019-06-22T20:25:30.630
Brilliant. This answers my question (as best it can), but would you know if you can boot from Windows straight into the BSD without restarting? – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T20:39:59.203
Sorry for the delay. "Life" got in the way. It's late ATM. But I'll update (append) my solution above with a procedure you can work with as soon as I can. :) – somebody – 2019-06-23T07:10:02.217
Thanks. I know what you mean. :-) – Legorooj – 2019-06-23T09:26:11.307
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The currently accepted answer is not the best way to securely erase a SSD. For the most part, it is good enough. However, it can leave some data behind. If you truly want to make sure ALL the data is gone, you need to use the SSDs manufacturers software, which most provide. The reason is due to the nature of how modern SSDs work. In short, writing 1TB of data to a 1TB SSD, doesnt mean the disk was written linearly from beginning to end. The SSD decides where it wants to write, not the OS. This is called wear leveling and can mean that bits of your data can remain. Again, the only way to truly wipe a SSD is using software from the manufacturer.
Keltari
Posted 2019-06-22T17:56:42.537
Reputation: 57 019
Thanks, but I'm looking for a really good wipe, not a perfect one. Thanks anyway though! – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T21:33:13.560
@Keltari I humbly disagree. In both strategies (excluding degaussing, or a magnet, which would be ineffective on an SSD) the facility dd can write 0s or random data to the entire disk. This is as good as it gets, where "secure wipes" are concerned. Where SSD's are concerned, it's all "bit flipping". securely wiping them is more trivial than that of more traditional (spinning) PATA drives. – somebody – 2019-06-23T07:05:49.993
@somebody you can disagree all you want, but you would be wrong. Wear leveling can prevent overwriting. In addition to that, you could disable the over-provisioning of the drive, write data to it, then reenable over-provisioning. Then DD could not even access that portion of the disk. – Keltari – 2019-06-23T19:35:27.097
Again, I have to humbly disagree. Best, is highly subjective, and in fact an opinion. My answer "bit flipping" is based on fact. Each cell contains either a 1, or a 0. So inverting (1 to 0, 0 to 1) those cells, is both faster, and completely effective at irradiating the (user) data. dd will perform this without harm to the hardware. Lastly; manufacturers are biased. As an example RAID controller manufacturers insist that hardware RAID is superior to software. Yet zfs has proven to be far more resilient. Yet manufacturers opinion remains the same. My proposal is fact not opi – somebody – 2019-07-01T17:19:54.000
Why do you specifically want to use the OS on the disk? There are solutions available that boot from USB and perform the wipe there. That said, any software you install that can wipe a disk will be good enough. Once you run the software it is loaded into memory, and it keeps working from memory until you reboot the system. – LPChip – 2019-06-22T17:59:25.073
So If you ran
format C: /p:1it would still completely overwrite the disk? I want to be able to erase as the computer is, there and then, without a usb, cd, etc. I don't have to use the OS, just the computer, with nothing else. – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T18:14:04.660Yes it will, except that its not really a secure erase. – LPChip – 2019-06-22T18:47:33.743
Forget it. Windows, if it is running, will not allow direct disk access to any parts of the disk occupied by a mounted filesystem, which would include the C: partition. You'll have to plug the disk into another computer, or boot into something other than the Windows system. – kreemoweet – 2019-06-22T19:15:17.307
"erase hard drives from the hard drive"?? Do you mean erase a partition? – harrymc – 2019-06-22T19:43:31.977
Hmm. Would it be possible then to take a usb based erasure tool and mount it on another partition, then boot directly into that without restart? – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T19:43:36.220
@harrymc I mean erase all of the running OS's partition (Whether that be the whole disk or not) while running said OS. – Legorooj – 2019-06-22T19:46:14.783
For the whole disk, use secure erase from the utility furnished by the manufacturer of the SSD. For a partition, you will need to write it sector-by-sector, which is a great pity for an SSD, by booting from a USB external disk. – harrymc – 2019-06-22T19:58:22.223
@kreemoweet with diskpart you can delete the partition windows is on too, why could you not format the partition then? Makes no sense. – LPChip – 2019-06-22T19:58:29.513