Free space wiper for vista

[T5]

I have tried 101 different (so Called) free space wipers for vista and at
all different levels of wiping, from 1 pass to 33 passes and nothing seems
to work. After completeing a free space wipe, I run an undelete utility and
lo and behold all of the files that I thought should have been erased are
still there. Please tell me what I should do to totally erase deleted files.


I am using vista home premium

 

[GTS]

The fact that the file names can still be found doesn't mean that the files
are retrievable. Have you actually tried to undelete one of those files?
There are some complexities in NTFS that make it difficult to impossible to
clean the file names the way many of these utilities do (or used to do) in
FAT systems.

 

[John Hanley]

I use the product called CyberScrub Privacy Suite. When I use it to
eliminate deleted information, there are Wipe Options beyond simply wiping
the free space; one of them is to "Scramble deleted files and folders
properties"; another is to "Scramble system transactions log file (on NTFS
drives only)". When I use all the options, my File Recovery application
comes up empty, so I think the stuff is quite completely wiped. Perhaps you
could explore whether your chosen file wipe program has these additional
features. Incidentally, I am also using Vista Home Premium. Cheers...

 

[T5]

thanks guys that has helped me no end. I really don't want to buy another
piece of crap like IOLO system mechanic 7 pro which claims to work with
Vista but actually the delete part of search and recover actually doesn't
work nor does the free space wiper of drive scrubber.

 

[Alun Harford]

I have tried 101 different (so Called) free space wipers for vista and
at all different levels of wiping, from 1 pass to 33 passes and nothing
seems to work. After completeing a free space wipe, I run an undelete
utility and lo and behold all of the files that I thought should have
been erased are still there. Please tell me what I should do to totally
erase deleted files.

Well I think the first step is to stop paying money to snake-oil
salesmen. It doesn't matter how many passes you do on a modern disk,
variations in temperature mean that the head will probably miss the
data. A competent adversary can easily get the data back anyway.

If you want to destroy the data, destroy the drive (put a large nail
through it, for example)

Alun Harford

 

[Charlie42]

Well I think the first step is to stop paying money to snake-oil
salesmen. It doesn't matter how many passes you do on a modern disk,
variations in temperature mean that the head will probably miss the
data. A competent adversary can easily get the data back anyway.

If you want to destroy the data, destroy the drive (put a large nail
through it, for example)

Sadly, even that won't erase the data completely, but it certainly
increases the adversary's cost of retrieving your sensitive data.

Charlie42

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

You have a few good answers but there an essential bit of information
you have not given?

What reason do you want to do this?
For transferring a computer to another individual, typically given
away or sold, the tools mentioned should do nicely.

BUT, a very big BUT...
How critical is it that the data never be retrieved?
If you absolutely can not afford for the data to get out, you have
only one option.
You absolutely must NOT lose control of the drive until you physically
destroy the platters on the drive.
Other than that, the data can often be recovered but the cost grows
fast and high depending on the method used to destroy the sensitive
data.

 

[T5]

Thanks guys,
So the word is that none of these data destroyer software packages actually
destroys the data beyond recovery....like they claim to do?

No, Jupiter I don't have anything that important that I need to totally
obliterate I am just trying to understand if it is possible to use software
to totally erase data and I think that my questions have been answered.

 

[GTS]

Any reputable wipe program with multiple over-writes in several patterns
will make the data unrecoverable by any normal means. How recoverable it
is beyond that - i.e by the best equipment in government labs is a matter or
widespread rumor and conjecture. Over my many years in the IT field I most
often saw it conjectured there is equipment which can recover data
overwritten as many as 7 times and was never able to corroborate that with
any authoritative information. The new rumor seems to now say 21 times.
That seems extremely unlikely, but the truth is that no one really knows.
Perhaps it's best to destroy a drive if there were data of critical
importance to national security and it was likely to end up in a
multi-million dollar government lab, but short of that it's overkill.

 

[Alun Harford]

Any reputable wipe program with multiple over-writes in several patterns
will make the data unrecoverable by any normal means. How recoverable
it is beyond that - i.e by the best equipment in government labs is a
matter or widespread rumor and conjecture.

You can recover the data by using modified versions of the firmware to
move the drive head a fraction of a track. You don't even need to remove
the disk from the physical drives.
Any good data recovery house can do this commercially.

Alun Harford

 

[GTS]

That's an urban legend. If you look at the claims of commercial recovery
services more carefully, you'll find that they talk about recovering deleted
files, but none claim to be able to recover overwritten data. There are a
number of scientific papers discussing the theoretical possibility of using
electron-microscopes (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) to find a 'shadow' of
the previously written sector. Some believe this was possible with floppy
diskettes and early MFM hard drives though not with modern high density
drives.

Sean Barry of Ontrack (one of the most respected recovery companies) has
said -
"There is no chance of recovery with overwritten clusters. The bit density
on hard disk drives is so great now that when the magnetics are rewritten,
the data is gone," he said. Barry is Ontrack's Remote Data Recovery Manager
and has 10 years of experience recovering files for private business as well
as government agencies.

The recoverability of overwritten data with modern hard drives lies mainly
in the realm of theory and urban legend. Here are a few interesting
articles on the subject.

http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence
http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html

--

 

[GTS]

See also http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/5687

 

[T5]

Totally fascinating guys.

I am totally convinced that anything we do online is recorded and
recoverable by someone somewhere otherwise the internet would be a haven for
any vice going and governments and law inforcement agencies the world over
wouldn't allow that ...would they? It is indeed a good thing that the bad in
our society can be convicted on evidence gleaned by data recovery methods
but what about the general public who can inadvertantly download something
that might incriminate or add to a case put against them at a later date
just because something from a long time ago resides on thier computer.