Hard drive cleansed of all info 100%?

[Guest]

Is this possible, short of incineration?
Thanks for helpful responses.
franktee

 

[Og]

Is this possible, short of incineration?
Thanks for helpful responses.
franktee

Do *not* think that mere incineration will wipe electro-magnetic data from a
hard drive.
The data-recovery industry earns a significant portion of its income by
recovering data from drives that have been through house / office / business
fires.

If you are expecting to destroy data via *heat*, apply enough heat to melt
the platters into an amorphous blob.

There are utilities (free and otherwise) that will write "ones" and "zeros"
across a drive.
Multiple passes by such utilities make data recovery from said drive
unlikely.

Steve

 

[Guest]

First, delete all your personal stuff. This involves using the file search
tool to locate all .jpg's , .gif's , .doc's , etc. Then, select any large
folder of system files and make hundreds of copies until your hard drive is
full. (What you're doing here is erasing by writing over what still may be
there.)

 

[M.I.5¾]

First, delete all your personal stuff. This involves using the file
search
tool to locate all .jpg's , .gif's , .doc's , etc. Then, select any large
folder of system files and make hundreds of copies until your hard drive
is
full. (What you're doing here is erasing by writing over what still may
be
there.)

Unfortunately, anyone determined to recover the original data can easily do
so. Because of alignment tolerances and errors, the original files can
frequently be found poking out from the edge of the newly written files.

If you really want to make it impossible to recover data from an unwanted
drive, the only reliable method is to physically destroy the drive. Well,
you don't actually need to destroy all of it. You only need to dismantle
the drive and destroy the platters (carefully - they are often made of
glass).

 

[John John]

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Trust me, unless you have state secrets on your drive no one is going to
spend the tens of thousands of dollars to *attempt* to recover files on
your disk after you wipe it, an attempt that would most likely utterly fail.

John

 

[Ken Blake]

Is this possible, short of incineration?

Literally, no it's not.

But you can certainly reduce the risk of someone retrieving anything on it
to a very low number, and that's good enough for most people.

It depends on how paranoid you want to be. Realize that no matter *what* you
do, there is always a remnant of what was written still present on the disk,
and using sophisticated techniques, a determined invader can sometimes
recover it. For that reason, the US government doesn't rely on any software
techniques to destroy really sensitive data, but physically melts the drive
in a furnace.

Most of us don't need that kind of security. Depending on what is on the
drive, and recognizing that most people will neither know how, nor want to
bother trying, to recover any old data on the drive, a simple format is
sufficient for most people. And for the enormous majority of people a
zero-fill utility is more than sufficient. If it were me, I wouldn't go any
further than that, but only you know what is on the drive and how much
someone else might be interested in it.


If you want a zero-fill utility, there are several downloadable choices that
Google will find for you. There probably isn't any particular reason to
prefer one of them over the others.

 

[Alias]

Is this possible, short of incineration?
Thanks for helpful responses.
franktee

Stick it in the Microwave for a few minutes on High, a microwave that
you don't plan to use later. Then run over it with a truck. Then rub the
underside on a rug so that it gets plenty of static. Then pour
hydrochloric acid on it. Then take a welding torch to it. Then take an
ocean cruise and drop it in the middle of the Atlantic. Hundreds of
years later scientists will claim that they have found the missing link
between Mr Arnold and Frank.

 

[R. McCarty]

For customer drives that I have to dispose of, I use Acronis Disk
director's "Wipe" Utility and a pass with Cyberscrub set to a level
to prevent hardware recovery. I used to throw the drives away but
now always return them to customers and let them store/dispose of.

If the drive is something I need to dispose of personally, I'll also use
an old "Bulk Erase" degausser on the drive before throwing it away.
Some people recommend a bashing with a sledgehammer to bend
the platters but I'm too old to go beating up on old hard drives.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the responses, they were all very helpful and also in good
humor.
Have a good day.
franktee

 

[M.I.5¾]

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Trust me, unless you have state secrets on your drive no one is going to
spend the tens of thousands of dollars to *attempt* to recover files on
your disk after you wipe it, an attempt that would most likely utterly
fail.

Anybody really determined can recover overwritten files. Even if they have
been overwritten 3 or 4 times. However, as you note, it does take a lot of
very specialised and expensive equipment and a good deal of time and
patience. The likelihood of anyone trying is a function of the likely value
of the recovered data.

 

[John John]

Anybody really determined can recover overwritten files. Even if they have
been overwritten 3 or 4 times. However, as you note, it does take a lot of
very specialised and expensive equipment and a good deal of time and
patience. The likelihood of anyone trying is a function of the likely value
of the recovered data.

Oh please do tell us who those "anybodies" are! I invite you to contact
all the data recovery experts and all the data recovery companies out
there and tell them that you have done a DOD wipe on a drive and then
ask them if they can recover your data. 99.98% of them will outright
tell you that they cannot recover the data on the drive, they will tell
you that they can't even recover the data if it was simply overwritten
once with other data, never mind secure wiping. Go ahead search the net
and email them all and find out for yourself! Of the .02% remaining who
tell you that they can .01% are lying and the other .01% will tell you
to expect to pay at least $100,000 to even "try" to recover the data and
they will make no guarantee of anything other than you will end up
$100,000 poorer!

The claims that data recovery can be made on wipe drives comes from Dr.
Gutmann's research where he has shown that using Magnetic Force
Microscopy he could recover data from wiped drives. Even Dr. Gutmann
later stated that many were making Voodoo science of his research and
that some were making greatly exaggerated claims of successful data
recovery on wiped drives, Dr. Gutmann stated that the claims were even
more so exaggerated considering the size of today's hard disks, his
research was done when disks were relatively small.

Using MFM or software that analyzes analog magnetic signals it is said
that data can be recovered from wiped drives but keep in mind that MFM
actually takes photographs of the bits where data is stored, quoting one
source:

"This pains taking process takes several months, and when it is finished
these pictures have to be stitched together.

Consider that a 20GB hard drive consists of 160, 000, 000, 000 bits.
Including overheads that could rise to around 300, 000, 000, 000 bits,
with each individual bit represented by a magnetic flux change. Since
each MFM picture displaying this flux change uses around 100 bytes, the
result is 40 Terabytes of data to be analyzed. Data recovery by this
means can cost 100, 000s of Dollars..."

And once again, there is no guarantee that the above procedure will
recover data. On today's hard disks of hundreds of GB such recovery
efforts would take thousands of man hours to gather and years to analize!

The plain and simple fact, as stated in one of the reference papers
below, is that: "Although such exotic methods of data recovery are
theoretically possible, and have even been discussed in the
peer-reviewed literature [11, 12], I have found no evidence of
commercially viable recoveries being performed with them. Furthermore,
I have seen no public demonstrations of any of these methods that show
the recovery of files or even user data – only images or raw encoded data."

Bottom line, if you work for the US army or the CIA and have state
secrets on your drive then do as suggested by others and melt your drive
in a furnace. For everybody else a secure wipe utility is sufficient,
no one will waste enormous amounts of money trying to recover your
emails from grandma and her secret meatloaf recipe! Do the environment
a favour, don't waste and reuse when you can.

John


J. Sawyer- MAGNETIC DATA RECOVERY - THE HIDDEN THREAT (PDF)
http://tinyurl.com/2mvkay

Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data
Recovery 527KB PDF.
Charles H. Sobey Published April 14, 2004.
http://www.actionfront.com/whitepaper/Drive-Independent Data Recovery
Ver14Alrs.pdf

Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory
Peter Gutmann
Department of Computer Science
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

Overwitten data: Why even the Secret Service can't get it back
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/5756

 

[David Starr]

Bottom line, if you work for the US army or the CIA and have state
secrets on your drive then do as suggested by others and melt your drive
in a furnace. For everybody else a secure wipe utility is sufficient,
no one will waste enormous amounts of money trying to recover your
emails from grandma and her secret meatloaf recipe! Do the environment
a favour, don't waste and reuse when you can.

John

Once upon a time I did contract work for NSA. In those days regulations
required classified disks and tapes "be overwritten with random numbers
6 times of more" before they could be considered unclassified.
In theory, a decent diskwipe program that locates every disk block of
the file to be wiped and overwrites it repeatedly should make the data
vanish for good. In practice, there are bound to be some diskwipe
programs that don't do a good job. Plus, there could be malware out
there that fakes out the diskwipe program by intercepting the operating
system disk read/write calls thus preserving the disk data. Was I
writing the regs today, I might very well call for melting the drive
mechanism in a furnace to avoid taking chances.

David Starr

 

[John John]

Once upon a time I did contract work for NSA. In those days regulations
required classified disks and tapes "be overwritten with random numbers
6 times of more" before they could be considered unclassified.
In theory, a decent diskwipe program that locates every disk block of
the file to be wiped and overwrites it repeatedly should make the data
vanish for good. In practice, there are bound to be some diskwipe
programs that don't do a good job. Plus, there could be malware out
there that fakes out the diskwipe program by intercepting the operating
system disk read/write calls thus preserving the disk data. Was I
writing the regs today, I might very well call for melting the drive
mechanism in a furnace to avoid taking chances.

Of course, a hard drive can fall off a truck on the way to the
furnace... There are easy way to test to see if the wipe utility did
it's job. DBAN works fine and if that doesn't suit some people they can
use Secure Erase instead.

John

John

 

[hdd_doctor]

Anybody really determined can recover overwritten files. Even if they have
been overwritten 3 or 4 times. However, as you note, it does take a lot of
very specialised and expensive equipment and a good deal of time and
patience. The likelihood of anyone trying is a function of the likely value
of the recovereddata.

Hi

Overwritten data can not be recovered! period.
MFM technology is not a reality or practical.
A single one pass overwrite can not be recovered, any 'remnants' or
'ghost image' of data can not be recovered, we are a DR company and
have examined this in detail at our lab.
Magnetic storage media technology is based on GMR heads which encode
the platter surface, this is a physical system which either 1 or 0 is
stored at a particular place on the media, if the media receives a
single pass of 1 from LBA 0 to the end of the user data area then
physically the disk has changed the original data has been replaced
with the new pattern, any previous data will be destroyed, comments of
adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are unpractical.
No magical machines exist to recover such data worldwide.
Unless of course there exists a quantum hard drive which can encode
both 1 and 0 in the same space and time - however we are uncertain
about that!

 

[M.I.5¾]

Anybody really determined can recover overwritten files. Even if they
have
been overwritten 3 or 4 times. However, as you note, it does take a lot
of
very specialised and expensive equipment and a good deal of time and
patience. The likelihood of anyone trying is a function of the likely
value
of the recovereddata.

Hi

Overwritten data can not be recovered! period.
MFM technology is not a reality or practical.
A single one pass overwrite can not be recovered, any 'remnants' or
'ghost image' of data can not be recovered, we are a DR company and
have examined this in detail at our lab.
Magnetic storage media technology is based on GMR heads which encode
the platter surface, this is a physical system which either 1 or 0 is
stored at a particular place on the media, if the media receives a
single pass of 1 from LBA 0 to the end of the user data area then
physically the disk has changed the original data has been replaced
with the new pattern, any previous data will be destroyed, comments of
adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are unpractical.
No magical machines exist to recover such data worldwide.
Unless of course there exists a quantum hard drive which can encode
both 1 and 0 in the same space and time - however we are uncertain
about that!

--------------------

Then clearly you know bugger all about the underlying modus operandi of a
hard disk drive. You bit of bullshit is presicely that - bullshit. It
assumes that the operation of the disk drive is mecahnically perfect. It
isn't and it never will be. Disk drives operate on servo technology and as
a result there are registration errors. The fundamental underlying
principle of servo technology is such that it cannot operate in the absence
of such errors. These errors ensure that any future data does not precisely
overwrite the existing data. Further, minor variations in magnetic
properties of the magnetic coating on the platter mean that some of the
magnetic crystals (or domains) retain the old image rather than the accept
the new. Although recovery of data from those domains is beyond the scope
of a cowboy data recovery company such as yours clearly is, it is
nevertheless possible (though whether it is actually worth the enormous
expense depends on the value of what you are trying to recover).

Both the British and American security services have looked into this issue
most extensively and have considered various methods of 'sanitising' used
hard disk drives. Their conclusion was that data can always be recovered,
but with increasing difficulty as more overwrites take place (increasing
polynomially). As a consequence, once magnetic media has had classified
data written to it, the drive must retain that classification regardless of
whether or how it is erased. That classification remains until the drive is
physically destroyed.

 

[hdd_doctor]

Hi

Overwritten data can not be recovered! period.
MFM technology is not a reality or practical.
A single one pass overwrite can not be recovered, any 'remnants' or
'ghost image' of data can not be recovered, we are a DR company and
have examined this in detail at our lab.
Magnetic storage media technology is based on GMR heads which encode
the platter surface, this is a physical system which either 1 or 0 is
stored at a particular place on the media, if the media receives a
single pass of 1 from LBA 0 to the end of the user data area then
physically the disk has changed the original data has been replaced
with the new pattern, any previous data will be destroyed, comments of
adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are unpractical.
No magical machines exist to recover such data worldwide.
Unless of course there exists a quantum hard drive which can encode
both 1 and 0 in the same space and time - however we are uncertain
about that!

--------------------

Then clearly you know bugger all about the underlying modus operandi of a
hard disk drive. You bit of bullshit is presicely that - bullshit. It
assumes that the operation of the disk drive is mecahnically perfect. It
isn't and it never will be. Disk drives operate on servo technology and as
a result there are registration errors. The fundamental underlying
principle of servo technology is such that it cannot operate in the absence
of such errors. These errors ensure that any future data does not precisely
overwrite the existing data. Further, minor variations in magnetic
properties of the magnetic coating on the platter mean that some of the
magnetic crystals (or domains) retain the old image rather than the accept
the new. Although recovery of data from those domains is beyond the scope
of a cowboy data recovery company such as yours clearly is, it is
nevertheless possible (though whether it is actually worth the enormous
expense depends on the value of what you are trying to recover).

Both the British and American security services have looked into this issue
most extensively and have considered various methods of 'sanitising' used
hard disk drives. Their conclusion was that data can always be recovered,
but with increasing difficulty as more overwrites take place (increasing
polynomially). As a consequence, once magnetic media has had classified
data written to it, the drive must retain that classification regardless of
whether or how it is erased. That classification remains until the driveis
physically destroyed.

Hi

The statement does not indicate that hard drives are perfect at all,
hence the comment;
"comments of adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are
unpractical."
Servo systems are not 100% accurate , but when you factor in the very
high b.p.i, track widths, areal density, any 'data' which might be
remaining would be unpractical to recover, sure if you want 100%
security physical destruction of the media is the best option.
The US government offered a huge amount of money for such a system to
be built, also all DR companies would like such equipment, where is
this equipment.
Our understanding of DR is qualified, what experience do you have?, i
presume you have recovered overwtitten data?
As you are aware all storgage media is unique, how exactly do read
overwritten data?, MFM is not practible whatever you say, so that
leaves the native drive to read that data back, so how do you make the
drive go to 'shifted' area?
Why do you post anonymously?
You seem to making this very personal?

Can you clarify what you mean by;
"These errors ensure that any future data does not precisely overwrite
the existing data"

Are you suggesting that some kind of algo is designed to stop
overwrites? This asumes that the hard drive controls where the data
is, not the O/S?

Go visit some the larger DR outfits websites, they all agree that
overwritten is out of bounds, if you can recover this type of data
then please can we send overwritten data for you to recover?

 

[M.I.5¾]

Hi

Overwritten data can not be recovered! period.
MFM technology is not a reality or practical.
A single one pass overwrite can not be recovered, any 'remnants' or
'ghost image' of data can not be recovered, we are a DR company and
have examined this in detail at our lab.
Magnetic storage media technology is based on GMR heads which encode
the platter surface, this is a physical system which either 1 or 0 is
stored at a particular place on the media, if the media receives a
single pass of 1 from LBA 0 to the end of the user data area then
physically the disk has changed the original data has been replaced
with the new pattern, any previous data will be destroyed, comments of
adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are unpractical.
No magical machines exist to recover such data worldwide.
Unless of course there exists a quantum hard drive which can encode
both 1 and 0 in the same space and time - however we are uncertain
about that!

--------------------

Then clearly you know bugger all about the underlying modus operandi of a
hard disk drive. You bit of bullshit is presicely that - bullshit. It
assumes that the operation of the disk drive is mecahnically perfect. It
isn't and it never will be. Disk drives operate on servo technology and
as
a result there are registration errors. The fundamental underlying
principle of servo technology is such that it cannot operate in the
absence
of such errors. These errors ensure that any future data does not
precisely
overwrite the existing data. Further, minor variations in magnetic
properties of the magnetic coating on the platter mean that some of the
magnetic crystals (or domains) retain the old image rather than the accept
the new. Although recovery of data from those domains is beyond the scope
of a cowboy data recovery company such as yours clearly is, it is
nevertheless possible (though whether it is actually worth the enormous
expense depends on the value of what you are trying to recover).

Both the British and American security services have looked into this
issue
most extensively and have considered various methods of 'sanitising' used
hard disk drives. Their conclusion was that data can always be recovered,
but with increasing difficulty as more overwrites take place (increasing
polynomially). As a consequence, once magnetic media has had classified
data written to it, the drive must retain that classification regardless
of
whether or how it is erased. That classification remains until the drive
is
physically destroyed.

Hi

The statement does not indicate that hard drives are perfect at all,
hence the comment;
"comments of adjacent data to the left or the right of the media are
unpractical."

The statement inn quotes is meaningless - M.I.5¾

Servo systems are not 100% accurate , but when you factor in the very
high b.p.i, track widths, areal density, any 'data' which might be
remaining would be unpractical to recover, sure if you want 100%
security physical destruction of the media is the best option.
The US government offered a huge amount of money for such a system to
be built, also all DR companies would like such equipment, where is
this equipment.

The principle of recovering such data has been demonstrated, but such a
system has not been built - at least as far as know. The method involved an
X-ray crystalographic (did I spell that right?) examination of the magnetic
domains. The recovery of data by this method would be very time consuming
and tedious (as it would probably have to be reconstructed on a bit by bit
basis). However, i would not e surprised if our various governments have
perfected the technique but kept very quiet about it. - M.I.5¾


Our understanding of DR is qualified, what experience do you have?, i
presume you have recovered overwtitten data?
As you are aware all storgage media is unique, how exactly do read
overwritten data?, MFM is not practible whatever you say, so that
leaves the native drive to read that data back, so how do you make the
drive go to 'shifted' area?
Why do you post anonymously?
You seem to making this very personal?

I post anonymously because I chose to. - M.I.5¾

Can you clarify what you mean by;
"These errors ensure that any future data does not precisely overwrite
the existing data"

How can I clarify that which is crystal clear. - M.I.5¾

Are you suggesting that some kind of algo is designed to stop
overwrites? This asumes that the hard drive controls where the data
is, not the O/S?

Again, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the underlying
technology. The OS controls which track and sector the data is written to,
but it is the hardware and firmware of the disk drive itself that controls
exactly where on the platter(s) that track and sector gets written to. -
M.I.5¾

Go visit some the larger DR outfits websites, they all agree that
overwritten is out of bounds, if you can recover this type of data
then please can we send overwritten data for you to recover?

They may all agree that it is out of bounds as far *as they are able to
recover*, but as any engineer knows the only thing that separates the
possible from the impossible is time and money. The security services are
almost bound to be able to achieve much that is beyond your scope and
knowledge. - M.I.5¾