Shredding deleted files

[Viator1964]

Hi, I really dont know if this is the right spot to ask this question.
If not, pls address me to the right ng or discussion forum )

I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
information from my hard disk. However, in the past I used to delete
files with no special precaution, so the disk is full of easily
retrievable old data. My program, Simple File Shredder, only accesses
files that havnt already been deleted.

Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
once and for all? Thanks in advance!

 

[Harry]

I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
information from my hard disk.

Get a Knoppix boot CD, boot it up, and run the following cmd.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

where /dev/hda is the primary master HDD.

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi, I really dont know if this is the right spot to ask this question.
If not, pls address me to the right ng or discussion forum )

I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
information from my hard disk. However, in the past I used to delete
files with no special precaution, so the disk is full of easily
retrievable old data. My program, Simple File Shredder, only accesses
files that havnt already been deleted.

Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
once and for all? Thanks in advance!

There's plenty that will completely wipe the entire hard drive like
http://www.dban.org/

That may not be what you want to do tho.

 

[Arno]

On Mar 13, 3:47?pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

Get a Knoppix boot CD, boot it up, and run the following cmd.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

where /dev/hda is the primary master HDD.

After bootup, go to a console with Ctrl-F1. Best remove/disconnect
all other HDDs. Determine which disks are present with fdisk:

fdisk -l

will list all disks and their partitions. SATA HDDs will show up
as sda,sdb,... IDE HDDs will show up as hda,hdb,...

It is better to use dd_rescue (also in Knoppix),
as it will give you progress output:

dd_rescue /dev/zero /dev/hda

If it the overwtite is very slow, you may also want to activate
DMA with

hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

This is typically not needed with SATA HDDs, but often needed
with IDE HDDs.

Arno

 

[iws]

Eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/node/6) is free and will erase both files and
empty space. I like it for its erase option within the context menu of
Windows Explorer. It can also erase the entire disc if the disc is not
needed for the operating system. It comes with the ability to also create a
Darik's Boot and Nuke disk that "securely wipes the hard disks of most
computers."

| Hi, I really dont know if this is the right spot to ask this question.
| If not, pls address me to the right ng or discussion forum )
|
| I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
| information from my hard disk. However, in the past I used to delete
| files with no special precaution, so the disk is full of easily
| retrievable old data. My program, Simple File Shredder, only accesses
| files that havnt already been deleted.
|
| Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
| once and for all? Thanks in advance!

 

[Bob Willard]

Eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/node/6) is free and will erase both files and
empty space. I like it for its erase option within the context menu of
Windows Explorer. It can also erase the entire disc if the disc is not
needed for the operating system. It comes with the ability to also create a
Darik's Boot and Nuke disk that "securely wipes the hard disks of most
computers."

| Hi, I really dont know if this is the right spot to ask this question.
| If not, pls address me to the right ng or discussion forum )
|
| I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
| information from my hard disk. However, in the past I used to delete
| files with no special precaution, so the disk is full of easily
| retrievable old data. My program, Simple File Shredder, only accesses
| files that havnt already been deleted.
|
| Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
| once and for all? Thanks in advance!

Yep - I've used Eraser for years. It is great.

 

[Andrew Hamilton]

Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
once and for all? Thanks in advance!

Not software, but hardware. A good sturdy hammer, and a screwdriver.
Three or four solid whacks to the top case of the drive to open up the
drive, then score the drive platters with the screwdriver. NO ONE
will ever get at that data again.

 

[iws]

| On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:47:37 -0700 (PDT), (e-mail address removed) wrote:
|
| >
| >
| >Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
| >once and for all? Thanks in advance!
|
| Not software, but hardware. A good sturdy hammer, and a screwdriver.
| Three or four solid whacks to the top case of the drive to open up the
| drive, then score the drive platters with the screwdriver. NO ONE
| will ever get at that data again.

Yeah but the person he's selling the hardware to probably expects it all to
still be in one piece and functioning!

 

[Rod Speed]

Not software, but hardware. A good sturdy hammer, and a screwdriver.
Three or four solid whacks to the top case of the drive to open up the
drive, then score the drive platters with the screwdriver. NO ONE
will ever get at that data again.

Tad difficult to sell it like that, stupid.

 

[Viator1964]

Eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/node/6)  is free and will erase both files and
empty space. I like it for its erase option within the context menu of
Windows Explorer. It can also erase the entire disc if the disc is not
needed for the operating system. It comes with the ability to also createa
Darik's Boot and Nuke disk that "securely wipes the hard disks of most
computers."

Great tip, I installed Eraser and it's performing wonders )
Thanks guys!

One more suggestion tough... I noticed Eraser has a feature to enable
the clearing of the paging file at shutdown. (under Preferences,
General.) In the help file it is mentioned that this will work under
Windows 2000. Does it work under XP/Vista as well? Also, is this
sufficient protection or is there some other measure to be taken in
order to shred the paging file?

 

[Arno]

Not software, but hardware. A good sturdy hammer, and a screwdriver.
Three or four solid whacks to the top case of the drive to open up the
drive, then score the drive platters with the screwdriver. NO ONE
will ever get at that data again.

Good luck with that if somebody is willing to invest a little
money in data recovery. A single overwrite is far more secure.

Arno

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
once and for all? Thanks in advance!

Darik's Boot and Nuke, www.dban.org, is very good. You can select the
level of security erase, ranging from a simple overwrite with zeros to a
full mil-spec wipe.

 

[Barry OGrady]

Hi, I really dont know if this is the right spot to ask this question.
If not, pls address me to the right ng or discussion forum )

I am selling my old hardware. I already shredded all recent sensitive
information from my hard disk. However, in the past I used to delete
files with no special precaution, so the disk is full of easily
retrievable old data. My program, Simple File Shredder, only accesses
files that havnt already been deleted.

Do you know a program that accesses deleted files and shreddes them
once and for all? Thanks in advance!

Run a defragmenter that erases free space.

Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og

 

[Arno]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:28:59 +1000, Barry OGrady

This solves the original poster's problem, but does not solve
the more basic need, which is for a program that
automatically erases files when they leave the Recycle Bin or are
deleted without going to the Recycle Bin.

AJC Software's Active Backup monitors all files so it
can save changed information, so there must be an operating system
hook that would allow handling what to do when a file is deleted
most of the time,

Not necessarily. It could just crawl the directoory structure slowly
and keep its own database to compare.

but a direct trap for file deletes would be better.

Indedd. However not ewven Unix/Linux does have such a hook,
so I expect there will be none on MS stuff.

Without a hook, I think the only thing that can reasonably be done
is a periodic (slow) overwrite of all free space.

Arno

 

[Arno]

Not necessarily. It could just crawl the directoory structure slowly
and keep its own database to compare.

Indedd. However not ewven Unix/Linux does have such a hook,
so I expect there will be none on MS stuff.

Without a hook, I think the only thing that can reasonably be done
is a periodic (slow) overwrite of all free space.

Arno

P.S.: The real solution is, of course, to encrypt your drive.

Arno

 

[Arno]

I use AJC Active Backup and I can tell it is "watching", not walking.[/QUOTE]

Well, watching and walking are the same things here.

In particular, programs that open and close many files or try to
protect their databases from crashes (such as Forte's Agent
newsreader) cause AJC Active Backup to use lots of CPU time.

This could be checksum calculations.

Sorry, not conclusive.

No - I don't even want someone with the key to the encrypted disk
to get access to the deleted stuff.

(I'm sending an email to the AJC Software guys to see if they
can do write a program to erase files that are deleted.)

Good idea.

Arno

 

[Arno]

Well, watching and walking are the same things here.


This could be checksum calculations.

As soon a file is open for write it goes onto a visible queue of files
needing to be backedup. As soon as the file is closed the file starts
to be backedup (assuming it is first in the queue) "backing up" means
making a new base backup file or merging the changes with the existing
base+changes file. All this can be seen by using a system monitoring
program to see what files are being read and written on the system.[/QUOTE]

Also, although I haven't found documentation for the call to set
things up, now that I looked again I did find:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300605:
"How To Monitor Win32 File System Changes in Java"
says it part:
"This article describes how you can use the Win32
FindFirstChangeNotification function and its related functions to
monitor file system changes from an application."
which is at least approximately the functionality needed from the
operating system (if you don't want to muck around with patching
the actual Windows code.)

Ok, _that_ is conclusive.

Arno