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Wipe Your Hard Disk Before Lending or Giving Away

Posted By Raymond In Category: Computer

Jul
17
2009

The videographer for my wedding has given me 3 sets of DVD but I wanted more than that which is the original video files that is imported from his camcorder. Although DVDs has very good quality but it’s still not as clear as the original video files. The video guy told me that the videos are in AVI format and takes up 100GB. The only way I can get him to transfer the AVI files to me is to lend him my external hard drive and then collect it the next day when he’s done copying.

I have an external 5.25″ 7200RPM USB/Firewire hard drive which I can pass it to him to copy but before doing that, it is important that I wipe out whatever is in there to prevent from being recovered. If you didn’t know, when a file is deleted from your computer even when after emptying the recycle bin, the file can still be recovered using data recovery software. This hard drive used to be my backup hard drive and it contained a lot of important stuff that is worth keeping. Leaving my hard drive to a stranger for the whole day is definitely dangerous. Here’s what I used to securely wipe out my hard drive.


I’d used Darik’s Boot And Nuke (DBAN) but since it is a boot disk and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of loading the correct drivers my external firewire hard drive, I prefer something simple and portable that can be ran on Windows. I found WipeDisk and Eraser which both are portable and very easy to use. WipeDisk looked easier than Eraser so I gave it a try. After running WipeDisk for about 30 minutes, the WipeDisk program hung and there’s no way for me to terminate the program. I had press the power button for 5 seconds on my laptop to turn off the computer and then turn it back on.

I immediately deleted WipeDisk from my computer and then tried Eraser. Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008.

All I need to do is run Eraser, go to File > New Task and add the external hard drive. Right click on the drive that’s added in Eraser and select Run. It took about 170 minutes to wipe out my 200GB hard drive which is a bit long but you can set Eraser to sleep or shutdown your computer when finished.
Eraser secure delete files

Make sure you always wipe your disk first before lending your external hard drive, usb flash drive, camera memory card to your friend or when you want to throw or donate the drive away.

[ Download Eraser ]


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    • webcadre

      thanks for the great post ray! :)

      but by the way how about format the drive does it not good enough?

    • Arvin

      what if i format the disk is this same or different

    • TechGuru

      I use iolo Drive Image, I use it even if i have to lend my USB Drive to anybody…. is it good Software as above mentioned ?

    • TechGuru

      Oops! not Drive Image it’s Drive Scrubber…

    • http://www.raymond.cc/ Raymond

      formatting a drive is not good enough.
      Let’s say you have 200GB of files in a hard drive. You format the drive and immediately pass it to your friend. Your friend can recover ALL the 200GB files.

    • Manas

      Yes. Raymond is correct. I have done it with my HDD many times. But still I want to know the reason behind that i.e. how it is possible? if anybody knows please tell me.

    • Abdul Haseeb Mirza

      @ Manas:
      I think when we format the computer creates a type of new layer on the old one giving us the entire space back but the old patterns and thus the data are still intact beneath the layer so using some specialised software which can read beneath them…CAN RECOVER IT!!

    • swapnil

      Hi Raymond, How about c cleaner ? its a freeware registry cleaner and also has a wipe free space option.
      Its a very good and reliable software and also has secure delete option giving you the feature of up to 35 pass secure delete.!

      Keep up the good work

      adiós

    • Jan

      With todays density on hd’s it is sufficient to zero it 2 times, no need for DoD or Guttman as these algos were developed in the beginnings of computer sience. Maybe they are needed if the attacker has an electron microscope.

    • mafia87

      Hi raymond, I always wipe the drive before giving it to someone else. Can you recommend me good software for wiping the drive? I mean the faster and efficient software. I didn’t care if it freeware or shareware.. Thanks is advance.. :)

    • TCzzz

      im with techguru on this one,i use when needed Drive Scrubber.
      although i have not tried any raymond mentioned drive scrubber also does the job.

    • rohit

      thanks for the post…really very useful….
      saw the thing in action…..

    • Dany

      Only this week i discovered your blog, and i do enjoy reading it. I’m surfing through every page, from your first page.
      Congrats for your wedding. Invite your readers(25.000 people) :).

    • SDR

      Hi Raymond and hi all users :)

      How does it look: When You format drive there is still “sign” of files which You had on it, erasing is overwriting all these sectors with radom data so they are “phisicaly” destroyed. The best method is Peter Gutmann which is overwriting files 35 times. but for the home user who want to sell drive to friend – use 2x radom data overwirte and the last pass set to write disk by zeros. There is no possibility to recover these data in home. Overwriting drive 3x give a sure that disk can’t be recovered by software avilable for normal user, 7x Give sure that there is no possibility to recover disk with using adv. software. Gutmann method give sure that there is no possibility to recover files even with hardware used to recovery files.

      Acronis true image also give a possibility to use realy good wiping tools, also paragon is offering good and fast software

    • ByteCode

      very very vety nice

      thanks alot Mr. Raymond

    • norman

      Today I read your column and it’s really very nice in order for us users to protect our privacy. I just noticed that other commentators recommends the Drive Scrubber. I will try this also. Nice post Mr. Ray. Thank you very much ang more power in this blog.

    • shown

      The question is:
      How is it possible for everybody to read data after a format ?
      Which public software can do that ?

      Because you say: erase everything because ppl can read after a format but we don t know the way if it s easy or not.

    • Ed

      For regular users it is enough to do one or two passes with random data like SDR said above post# 14.

      You need the 35 passes Guttman algorithm only if you are afraid the KGB will open your hard drive and actually use electronic microscope to locate the bits so to rebuild the data.
      Can you imagine the time and cost to do this?

    • Abdul Majeed

      @shown
      Actually deleting n formatting will not remove the file permanently… it only remove the file handler (like link).

      Delete file are stored in drive unless other file occupy its place (like wen u copy files it get stored randomly)..

      hope somewhat clear to u

    • http://www.urssiva.com Siva

      hi raymond,

      thnks for the article.

      i do like the eraser software , but what i would like to see or have is .. most of the times the pendrive / harddissk contains data which i cant tranfer to another media or say i dont want to delete them ( less take that the current data files are not that important to me , but i had sensitive information/files on it before and deleted it).. in that condition is there a possibilty that i could make the deleted files unrecoverable ?

      is there a way to know whether the deleletd files are still there and wipe it out completely , without having to format or delete the files that are currently rhere in the pendrive or HDD

      thnks,

    • Abdul Majeed

      @Siva

      use recuva, its free in that u can find whether the file can be recovered or not

      http://www.recuva.com/

      Hope it’ll be useful

    • Ziad

      Thanks raymond :) im just wondering, does anyone know any software tht i can download to recover old files n pics tht we deleted ?! for XP and Vista operating system… i want a friendly use free software! thx all :)

    • nishant

      nice post..

    • chrix

      Formatting a drive doesn’t erase anything but the logical structure of the disk (where are the directories, the structure of the partitions, file names.. and so on).

      Physical datas are still on the disk, that’s why it’s so easy to recover stuff.

      It’s quite safe to do 1 or 2 passes with random data to be sure it will be almost impossible to recover anything from the disk.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Bad888Max mobb

      SO YOU could have like *400*gigs on 200gb hard disk
      you format it and then put another 200gb and then recover the formated files and new files and you have 400gb extracted -theoretically-

      is it possible!?
      peace

    • Jack

      What do you recommend, as far as software, so I can recover deleted data. I deleted a video file accidentally.

    • irjan

      Thanks a lot Ray!!!

    • Rev

      As far as I know, wiping (overwriting) USB flash drives shorten the life of the memory chips inside it. It’s a stupid and paranoid thing to wipe out a precious flash drive with multiple cycle (and probably military grade) methods when just leasing it to a friend or someone you trust well/who is computer-illiterate.

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