utility that can delete files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob I
  • Start date Start date
Does anyone knows a utility that can delete files recursively from a folder?
I used so far the dos command line "del /S *" but I prefer a Windows
utility
Regards
Gomez
 
there are utilities that
wipe the disk of deleted files.

however, there are differing
opinions whether wiping
deleted files with something
like military encryption
is effective against
hard drive forensics.

my opinion and a old friend
who is an m.i.t professor
is that the only sure way that
the contents on the disk are
not retrievable is to toss the
hard drive into a volcano or
the middle of ocean in the
middle of the night.
--
--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>

DatabaseBen, Retired Professional

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This NNTP newsgroup is evolving to:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
 
there are utilities that
wipe the disk of deleted files.

however, there are differing
opinions whether wiping
deleted files with something
like military encryption
is effective against
hard drive forensics.

my opinion and a old friend
who is an m.i.t professor
is that the only sure way that
the contents on the disk are
not retrievable is to toss the
hard drive into a volcano or
the middle of ocean in the
middle of the night.
Click to expand...

I saw a show on television that mentioned some very powerful forensic
software that could find the last two (that's right 2) sets of files on
a hdd that had been overwritten. That is you save file A, then you
overwrite it with file B. Then you overwrite that with file C. They
could recover B and A with extremely high rates of accuracy!!!

But most people do not have access to that software.

I agree though that if you want 100% security - take the drive apart and
bend/smash the platters...

OT addendum... and while you're ati it grab the neodymium magnets,
they're the strongest fixed magnets made and they're awesome. I've had
some that were strong enough to cling to one another through my hand, so
when I held my hand out horizontally and rotated the palm up or down the
magnets didn't fall off! And if you stick them together it's really hard
to get them apart.

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available

Mike
 
I'm in the middle of securely disposing of a failed
hard drive (the failure of which condemns to death
a truly old machine that was reduced to performing
a few chores in the basement). I have the platters,
have read that any commonly used metal reaches
its Curie temperature and demagnetizes at heats
readily reached with propane torches or in the
depths of a briquette barbecue, and plan to roast
the platters in such a fire I will soon have access
to. Let CTU get something out of _them_!
Click to expand...

LOL. What is CTU?
 
Mike said:
I saw a show on television that mentioned some very powerful forensic
software that could find the last two (that's right 2) sets of files on
a hdd that had been overwritten. That is you save file A, then you
overwrite it with file B. Then you overwrite that with file C. They
could recover B and A with extremely high rates of accuracy!!!

But most people do not have access to that software.
Click to expand...

Most people don't have access to that software because it just plain
doesn't exist, it's nothing but BS!

John
 
Mike said:
And you know this how?
Click to expand...

You are the one who made the claim that there is some sort of 'magic'
software available that can recover overwritten files, it is up to you
to substantiate your claim and supply the name of the software and the
company who makes this software. The leading forensic recovery software
(EnCase) cannot do this and none of the major data recovery firms can do
this, just call them and ask them and you will get the same answer from
all of them. This idea that data could be recovered from overwritten
drives was a theory advanced by Dr. Peter Gutmann and he himself has
told me that his theory was misconstrued by many who read his paper, he
was never able to recover overwritten files and he knows of no one who
ever was.

John
 
Anthony said:
In the recently deceased TV show "24", the fictional
CTU, the CounterTerrorism Unit, was frequently faced
with computing resources (usually laptop or desktop
hard drives) which had been intentionally or occasionally
accidentally damaged before being captured from various
terrorist organizations. Their software and particularly
their personnel were legendary in being able to recover
just enough data to carry on a complex confrontation
with the baddies, but usually not close to enough data
to achieve a decisive victory. They tended to do better
as the end of each season approached, particularly
once the always-present mole trying to advance the
baddie cause in CTU headquarters had been detected.
Click to expand...

LOL, in other words this whole notion of recovering overwritten data is
nothing but fiction! The same kind of nonsense happens on other shows
like CSI, some people see these fictional TV shows and they think that
the forensic tools and techniques shown in these shows are real!

John
 
yeah,
I agree.

in fact, the wiping utilities
don't overwrite the physical
data in the disk sectors.

users believe that the physical
data in the disk sectors/clusters
are over written by "umph" number
of times by the wiping utilities.

when it is only the multiple
regions in the fat that are
are overwritten by "umph"
number of times by the
utilities.

--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @Hotmail.com
- nntp Postologist
~ "share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
db said:
in fact, the wiping utilities
don't overwrite the physical
data in the disk sectors.
Click to expand...

Of course they do, they overwrite every sector on the disk, including
cluster tips. If the wiping utility doesn't do this then it is
completely useless!

John
 
John said:
Of course they do, they overwrite every sector on the disk, including
cluster tips. If the wiping utility doesn't do this then it is
completely useless!

John
Click to expand...

:-)
Hoopiehead alert???
 
the mechanics of clusters
do not work the way you
think they should.

there is a lot of data in
between the clusters and

lots more in orphaned clusters
allocated to files that utilize
multiple clusters.

wiping utilities are ineffective
and the rule of thumb is to
"destroy" the hard drive.

sounds like the brooklyn
bridge you bought is in need
of repairs.


--
--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>

DatabaseBen, Retired Professional

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This NNTP newsgroup is evolving to:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
 
You are the one who made the claim that there is some sort of 'magic'
software available that can recover overwritten files, it is up to you
to substantiate your claim and supply the name of the software and the
company who makes this software. The leading forensic recovery software
(EnCase) cannot do this and none of the major data recovery firms can do
this, just call them and ask them and you will get the same answer from
all of them. This idea that data could be recovered from overwritten
drives was a theory advanced by Dr. Peter Gutmann and he himself has
told me that his theory was misconstrued by many who read his paper, he
was never able to recover overwritten files and he knows of no one who
ever was.
John
Click to expand...

I claimed that I saw this on a television show, that is true. They did
not mention the name of the software. Also the government often has
technology that is years ahead of what the public knows about. I have
not seen this at work but I now damage platters on drives I don't want
people to access anything from, and I advise the same to all of my friends.

You also made a claim, that it doesn't exist, so how can you be
uncomfortable if someone asks you to back up your claim?

Mike
 
The smallest storage unit is a a sector and clusters are groups of
sectors. Poorly designed wiping utilities wipe 'files' and do not
bother with cluster tips (unused sectors within clusters). Good wiping
utilities overwrite *every* sector (including cluster tips and unused
clusters), as a matter of fact few wiping utilities in use today would
work otherwise. Your understanding of how disk wiping works is feeble
to say the least, securely wiped data is unrecoverable by any means.

John
 
Mike said:
I claimed that I saw this on a television show, that is true. They did
not mention the name of the software. Also the government often has
technology that is years ahead of what the public knows about. I have
not seen this at work but I now damage platters on drives I don't want
people to access anything from, and I advise the same to all of my friends.

You also made a claim, that it doesn't exist, so how can you be
uncomfortable if someone asks you to back up your claim?
Click to expand...

For a period of about five years, on and off in my spare time, I did a
lot of searching for this 'Holy Grail' of data recovery! Anytime that
it would appear that promising information was about to be found it
always came down to the same thing; quotes from or claims made on the
basis of Dr, Gutmann's paper or hearsay about conspiracies and
government secrets! I found out that the one thing in common that any
who claimed that this was possible have is that none of them could give
hard evidence or give us the name of anyone or any company who could
actually do it, classic hallmarks of urban myths!

After countless hours of futile searching for this data recovery Grail I
decided to ask persons and companies in the know about data recovery, I
started e-mailing and calling those who I thought would be able to
provide real answers. I contacted at least 10 different data recovery
companies, some who make data recovery software and some who run clean
room data recovery. All of them told me the same thing, they cannot
recover overwritten data. Quoting from an email from one of the major
firms: "It is nothing but a theory at best, add secret government
capabilities and the theory has now entered the realm of urban legends".

The claim that governments have tools to do this is often used to
bolster the myth but it is interesting to note that in his 2004 paper,
Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data
Recovery, Charles H. Sobey wrote:

"It is very telling that the US Department of Defense's Combating
Terrorism Technology Support Office placed a "Broad Agency
Announcement" seeking just such a [magic] machine for damaged, erased,
or overwritten media."

The DoD's request went unanswered, no one took them up on it. In a
telephone conversation I posed the question about the DoD's request to
an engineer at Seagate. The engineer chuckled and said that while he
was not privy to any information about these kind of projects within his
company he nonetheless felt that to undertake the request would have
been an exercise in futility.

Finally, after all of the data recovery and hard disk manufacturers that
I had contacted told me that it was impossible to recover overwritten
data I decided to ask Dr. Gutmann himself about it. His answers to me
confirmed the urban myth status of the whole thing.

You can read Charles H. Sobey's paper here:

ActionFront Research
Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data Recovery
http://www.actionfront.com/ts_whitepaper.aspx

Dr. Gutmann's paper is available here:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html


More on the subject in these links:

Data Removal and Erasure from Hard Disk Drives
http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx#Overwriting

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

Is overwritten data really unrecoverable?
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5687

Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html

Researchers Prove Single Pass Overwrite Effective
https://infosecurity.us/?p=5474

John
 
TopPosted Because It Makes Sense In This Case:

Excellent information, John. Many thanks for taking the time to post
it.

-- Larry



Mike said:
I claimed that I saw this on a television show, that is true. They did
not mention the name of the software. Also the government often has
technology that is years ahead of what the public knows about. I have
not seen this at work but I now damage platters on drives I don't want
people to access anything from, and I advise the same to all of my friends.

You also made a claim, that it doesn't exist, so how can you be
uncomfortable if someone asks you to back up your claim?
Click to expand...

For a period of about five years, on and off in my spare time, I did a
lot of searching for this 'Holy Grail' of data recovery! Anytime that
it would appear that promising information was about to be found it
always came down to the same thing; quotes from or claims made on the
basis of Dr, Gutmann's paper or hearsay about conspiracies and
government secrets! I found out that the one thing in common that any
who claimed that this was possible have is that none of them could give
hard evidence or give us the name of anyone or any company who could
actually do it, classic hallmarks of urban myths!

After countless hours of futile searching for this data recovery Grail I
decided to ask persons and companies in the know about data recovery, I
started e-mailing and calling those who I thought would be able to
provide real answers. I contacted at least 10 different data recovery
companies, some who make data recovery software and some who run clean
room data recovery. All of them told me the same thing, they cannot
recover overwritten data. Quoting from an email from one of the major
firms: "It is nothing but a theory at best, add secret government
capabilities and the theory has now entered the realm of urban legends".

The claim that governments have tools to do this is often used to
bolster the myth but it is interesting to note that in his 2004 paper,
Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data
Recovery, Charles H. Sobey wrote:

"It is very telling that the US Department of Defense's Combating
Terrorism Technology Support Office placed a "Broad Agency
Announcement" seeking just such a [magic] machine for damaged, erased,
or overwritten media."

The DoD's request went unanswered, no one took them up on it. In a
telephone conversation I posed the question about the DoD's request to
an engineer at Seagate. The engineer chuckled and said that while he
was not privy to any information about these kind of projects within his
company he nonetheless felt that to undertake the request would have
been an exercise in futility.

Finally, after all of the data recovery and hard disk manufacturers that
I had contacted told me that it was impossible to recover overwritten
data I decided to ask Dr. Gutmann himself about it. His answers to me
confirmed the urban myth status of the whole thing.

You can read Charles H. Sobey's paper here:

ActionFront Research
Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data Recovery
http://www.actionfront.com/ts_whitepaper.aspx

Dr. Gutmann's paper is available here:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html


More on the subject in these links:

Data Removal and Erasure from Hard Disk Drives
http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx#Overwriting

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

Is overwritten data really unrecoverable?
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5687

Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html

Researchers Prove Single Pass Overwrite Effective
https://infosecurity.us/?p=5474

John
Click to expand...
 
In
Gomez said:
Does anyone knows a utility that can delete files
recursively from a folder? I used so far the dos command
line "del /S *" but I prefer a Windows utility
Regards
Gomez
Click to expand...

copy, xcopy, xxcopy, and a jillion others. Write a batch and call it from
windows; no prompt line needed.
 
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