Wiping hard drive clean

[Jenny]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has a recommendation for wiping
a hard drive clean. I know that when you do fdisk or do a
reinstall of win 2K it is supposed to wipe the drive clean
but I want to make sure all financial and personal stuff
gets wiped out as well.

Thanks!

 

[JeffO]

This is a Qbasic program that will write all 1's to any
disk, thereby completely erasing all data.

**************Start cut & paste***************
OPEN "O",1,"filename" 'C:\clear.txt
X$=STRING $ (255,255) 'set x$ = all ones for 255
10 PRINT #1, X$ 'do until disk
fills and this program aborts
ON ERROR GOTO 20
GOTO 10
20 CLOSE #1
PRINT "Done" 'display "Done" on screen
KILL "filename" 'abort the process
END
************end cut & paste********************

Or go to IBM and get WIPE.EXE to write all one's until
filled.
Or add the drive(s) to another machine and reformat and
copy safe files (like BMPs) to the drive until it's
filled, then erase.

 

[Rick]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has a recommendation for wiping
a hard drive clean. I know that when you do fdisk or do a
reinstall of win 2K it is supposed to wipe the drive clean
but I want to make sure all financial and personal stuff
gets wiped out as well.

Thanks!

It depends what level of wiping you're talking about. FDISK,
FORMAT, low-level formatting etc. will erase your data and
make it unrecoverable to casual users, but not e.g. to government
authorities. For that you'll need a third-party wipe utility that
makes multiple passes over the disk. See this site for a list of
free DOD-compliant disk wipe utilities:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

Rick

 

[Benn Wolff]

if the drive is NTFS, use the cipher cmd.
this over writes 1 & 0's over the empty space of a NTFS drive.
C:\>cipher /wC:\ will start the cipher for the C: dirve, change drive as
needed.
I use this & the safe deleat from Parition Magic 8.
*********************** paste ***************************
C:\>cipher /?
Displays or alters the encryption of directories [files] on NTFS partitions.

CIPHER [/E | /D] [/S:dir] [/A] [/I] [/F] [/Q] [/H] [/K] [pathname [...]]

CIPHER /W:directory

/E Encrypts the specified directories. Directories will be marked
so that files added afterward will be encrypted.
/D Decrypts the specified directories. Directories will be marked
so that files added afterward will not be encrypted.
/S Performs the specified operation on directories in the given
directory and all subdirectories.
/A Operation for files as well as directories. The encrypted file
could become decrypted when it is modified if the parent
directory
is not encrypted. It is recommended that you encrypt the file and
the parent directory.
/I Continues performing the specified operation even after errors
have occurred. By default, CIPHER stops when an error is
encountered.
/F Forces the encryption operation on all specified objects, even
those which are already encrypted. Already-encrypted objects
are skipped by default.
/Q Reports only the most essential information.
/H Displays files with the hidden or system attributes. These
files are omitted by default.
/K Create new file encryption key for the user running CIPHER. If
this
option is chosen, all the other options will be ignored.
/W Removes data from available unused disk space on the entire
volume. If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored.
The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume. If it
is a mount point or points to a directory in another volume, the
data on that volume will be removed.

dir A directory path.
pathname Specifies a pattern, file or directory.

Used without parameters, CIPHER displays the encryption state of
the current directory and any files it contains. You may use multiple
directory names and wildcards. You must put spaces between multiple
parameters.
************************end ****************************

 

[Overlord]

Lessee now.....
You already know that deleting a file in Winders just moves it to the
recycle bin. You already know that actually deleting it only tells
the disk, "hey, there's not really a file here!"

Here's one:
http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/clndisk.html
This'll give you options beyond just nuking a drive too.
Up to 7 pass simple wipe.
7 pass NIS wipe.
Or if you're really paranoid, there's the big mama of a 35 pass
Gutmann wipe. Don't think anyone but God can access your files after
that.....

Here's another:
http://www.gregorybraun.com/Shredder.html
It's got options to nuke individual files from the right click context
menu. "NSA approved" 7 pass overwrite.

Those are the ones I use.
Of course all these pale in comparison to a can of gasoline and a big
hammer.....

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has a recommendation for wiping
a hard drive clean. I know that when you do fdisk or do a
reinstall of win 2K it is supposed to wipe the drive clean
but I want to make sure all financial and personal stuff
gets wiped out as well.

Thanks!

~~~~~~
Bait for spammers:
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost
postmaster@[127.0.0.1]
~~~~~~
Remove "spamless" to email me.
The spam was just getting overwhelming.
I had to...

 

[Jenny]

Thanks for the link.

Now I have a very newbie question, these tools, when do I
use them? I need to reinstall Win 2K and give this laptop
to someone else. Do I use these before or after the OS
reinstall?

Thanks so much!

Jenny