Best Secure Erasure Software?

I'm planning on selling my old HP dv4t notebook to my brother and I wanted to know what secure erasure software would be best to use before giving the notebook to him.

I want to make sure there is absolutely none of my information on the drive so that if ever he had his notebook stolen or does whatever with the drive, my information wouldn't be on there.

 

I have heard that D`BAN is good.

http://www.dban.org/

 

Maybe HDDErase?

 

Both options sound very good, I may go with DBAN only because I've heard of it more times before. If I had bad sectors I would go w/ HDDErase.

 

Generally just using the recovery disc to reinstall windows is good enough,its not like he's going to go looking for the deleted data. Plus you're giving him a clean OS.

 

Call me paranoid.

I just want to erase the drive than reinstall the OS using the Windows Recovery Discs. He'll have a clean OS and I'll have a clear mind.

 

A full format gets rid of the information so that only the NSA could recover anything.

 

Formatting hardly gets rid of the information, it only gets rid of the partition table. Even middle school students could recover data if all you did was format the harddrive.

Hell I could just get a LiveCD to prove my point. A secure erasure would make it take too much effort for any amateur or group of identity thieves to bother and they would just move on to another hard drive. I'm not trying to go to NSA level deletion since that would only mean someone or a group with enough vested interest in me are specifically targeting me.

As far as I know, I don't have such enemies. If I did, I'd just destroy the harddrive.

 

A full format rewrites the entire disk. You are thinking of a quick format.

 

Even a full format doesn't delete the data.

I seriously hope you haven't given away any of your harddrives after only during a full format:
http://www.webopedia.com/didyouknow/computer_science/2007/completely_erase_harddrive.asp

http://www.guard-privacy-and-online-security.com/format-hard-drive-erase-hidden-files.html

There is a reason you can recover information from a formatted hard drive.

 

Your best bet is to use nuclear option. Wipe the entire sectors of your drive with dban. One wipe with zeros is good enough for modern hard drive. You would need to restore the system from recovery dvd.

 

Linux boot disc, open a terminal, type in

Code:

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Wait 20-45 minutes, and not even the NSA could recover the data, much less any random data thief.

 

Yes, a full format deletes the data. It overwrites it with 0's. Why else do you think it takes so damn long? If you know the average prolonged write speed of your hard drive and the size of your hard drive, you can calculate how long it will take to write over every bit on the drive. When you do a full format in Windows, you will notice that it takes this long.

All the software out there and web sites that claim recovery is as easy as 1,2,3 are referring to overwritten boot sectors, quick formats, and the like where the data isn't erased, just not easily accessible.

 

No, full format doesn't overwrite with zeros. It simply checks for bad sectors. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686 which is why it takes longer. Dban or alike is the only solution.

 

Oh jeez. I guess my identity is stolen already.

 

Yep

Gutmann is an incredibly long process but it really isn't any more efficient than shorter erasure measures. Don't judge effectiveness by how long it takes to read/write the hard drive.

 

Sorry, I was being facetious. Full formatting overwrites the drive with 0's, and trust me, no software you can put on your computer can help you recover anything that was previously there. When the hard drive tries to pick up any data from the platters, all it is going to find are 0's, and nothing can help that. hendra's link details Windows XP's method of formatting. Windows Vista and 7 completely overwrite the drives.

 

Sorry I forgot to include any documentation. Here is microsoft support saying that unlike XP and previous versions of Windows, Vista writes 0's to the entire disk: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941961/en-us

 

Buy a new, inexpensive, replacement hard drive, swap the drives out, use the system recovery disks (or clone the hidden recovery partition back over onto the new hard drive) to put the original OS back on a virgin hard drive, and then give him the notebook (depending on how much you like him - he is your bro, after all), either do all the OS updates beforehand, or let him do them - that way he gets to learn all about his new computer!

Then, take the old hard drive, and if you don't have a use for it in an external enclosure, physically destroy it (sledgehammer, propane torch, oxyacetylene torch, whatever floats your boat).

 

Since you didn't bother to state this information about the differences between XP and Vista/7's format in your previous posts all of them are technically incorrect since you have no idea what version of Windows the person would be using to perform the format. It's no wonder that you were challenged at every turn. While it may have seemed obvious to you, in the future you need to make sure to clarify your remarks better as according to your earlier posts ALL versions of Windows would write 0's performing a full format, which we all know is false.

You ask that we trust you, but how can we when you make false statements.

 

Simply overwriting once with 0's will not make the data unrecoverable. It will make most of it difficult to find with a lot of the tools out there, but even some of the freeware stuff is good enough that it can reconstruct a lot of what's been overwritten, and will give you some sort of visual representation of that data onscreen, even if it cannot recover enough to reconstitute a viable file.

I know this because I once spent many fruitless days trying to reconstruct a hard drive from my wife's old computer that I had converted to other uses - including installing about 6 different linux variants on it and using each one for a while - I wasn't able to retrieve as separate, saveable files many of my wife's documents that I had ruined, but I was able to recover information from several important files by writing down by hand what the software could reconstruct on-screen. Obviously, that isn't very useful with images, but with text files, such as emails from important people, it proved to be a decent way to recover otherwise overwritten files.

BTW, just as a tangential word of advice, don't ever mess with your wife's computer (i.e., taking it apart, rejiggering software, etc...) until and unless you've made a fully-accessible backup of the hard drive.

 

Are you sure those bits and pieces you retrieved were written over and not just what was left untouched?

Also, what software did you use? I'm trying to test it out, but I am unable to find any freeware that promises more than being able able to recover items that were deleted from the recycle bin.

 

Yes, I am sure. Files that were in areas that hadn't been overwritten were recoverable as separate files - there was a reasonably clear distinction between what was in an area that had been overwritten, and what was not.

Also, if we want to get persnickety, I'll accept "my bad" - some of the software I used was for-pay software that came with trial use periods - frequently those will give you the full functionality, but will not permit you to actually recover files above a certain size - since I was mostly looking for small text files, that limitation was not a problem as far as I was concerned. One of the pieces of software I used was the trial version of active@undelete. There's also a decent listing of some of the freeware recovery stuff at thefreecountry.com here.

Softpedia also lists a bunch of stuff, mostly registerware, some of which I used earlier iterations of, here.

I'm not saying that you're going to get handy-dandy stuff by the barrel-load, but a single pass of zeroes is not going to make everything irretrievable, which may, or may not, be sufficient, depending on each individual's level of paranoia.

 

I've observed that Seatools notes their zero utility is not a secure erase. Sticking with a few random passes with zeros in the final pass is a minimal amount of work. Easy enough to seem worthwhile even if unneeded.

 

If you can still recover even a single bit of information from a hd that had been zeroed, then you didn't zero it properly. In order for this to work, the entire sectors of the drive must be zeroed. A nuclear option. All or nothing.

Simply zeroing the file itself and free space is insufficient since trace of that file may still be found at the swap file, hibernation files, temporary files and registry. Your wiping software must have missed some sectors due to improper use or bugs or simply bad software.

One could verify this by using a disk editor program that could actually see the content of the drive sector by sector, bypassing partition and OS all together.

A properly wiped modern hard drive with zeroes shouldn't be recoverable not even with forensic tool as desribed with this video and website from someone who actually has the tool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDgc3fXtiho
http://whereismydata.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/forensics-wiping-hard-drive-do-you-need-thermite/

 

Nothing's inconsistent with what I've said - a single pass of zeroes will not sufficiently eradicate the data that is to be overwritten. That is why those who have a real reason to worry about security, like the US military, specify that overwriting be done numerous times (I believe the US standard is 7 passes).

 

I still think that you didn't wipe your drive properly. How did you wipe your drive? What software do you use? What procedure did you follow?

 

I didn't "wipe" the drive - you've got me confused with someone else. I did the functional equivalent of overwriting once with zeroes - which (pardon the shouting, but I'm in a mean mood right now) IS NOT THE SAME THING AS WIPING THE DRIVE.

 

There are several methods of wiping. Wiping with zeroes is one of them that is overwriting all sectors with zeroes.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, if you didn't wipe the drive, that explains why you can still see some data. In order to make data unrecoverable, wiping is what is required. But wiping with zeroes once is sufficient, especially with modern hard drive.