Join or sign in Register for your free TechRepublic membership or if you are already a member, sign in using your preferred method below. Use Your Email Use FacebookUse Linkedin

how2 securely delete a drive’s files (when I can’t access it)

Locked

Odd situation: In a panic, I bought a terabyte drive to replace a failing back up drive, ran home, hooked it up, Ghosted my whole C and D drives to it, went to bed. Next day, I read the manual, exercised the drive a bit and decided it was a bad purchase. So I deleted my back ups, uninstalled the drive’s “special” drivers and ended my “subscription” to the web site to which you need to be connected to use the damn thing (need I say more?), and was about to return it when I realized I needed more than a simple ‘delete’ to securely remove my whole business life from the beast.

Short of putting it in the microwave for a while, anyone have a suggestion about how to clean the drive’s data without reinstalling the arcane drivers, etc.? I’m thinking maybe refrigerator magnets, etc. or something similarly satisfying. Thanks in advance.

Jim

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to how2 securely delete a drive’s files (when I can’t access it)

Clarifications

Disk to Reads lots of 1’s

In reply to how2 securely delete a drive’s files (when I can’t access it)

To wipe your disk in a permanate way is to get a tool to write lots of 1’s onto the disk. suchs tools as

Darik’s Boot and Nuke
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

or
CopyWipe
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

Any Military Spec Wiping Utility will do the job required here

In reply to how2 securely delete a drive’s files (when I can’t access it)

It writes a series of 1 or Zero’s tot he HDD to every sector and does this several times to completely destroy all the data on the drive making it very expensive to recover if it is at all possible.

While the only sure way is to destroy the drive completely this will render you incapable of returning it and getting a refund. If you use a wiping utility that writes to the whole drive at least 5 times this will render the drive safe according to the Legislated Requirements of places like CIA, FBI and so on.

While it is still possible to recover data off the drive it requires a very expensive process that costs Hundreds of Thousands of $ and is time consuming. So it’s considered as Safe.

Any of the applications listed here should do the job.

http://tinyurl.com/5rfcef

Boot & Nuke isn’t to this level but if you run it 5 times it should have a similar effect.

Col

Thanks guys, but…

In reply to how2 securely delete a drive’s files (when I can’t access it)

I wasn’t clear: I have a good shredder, but to use any data shredding method requires me to reinstall the terrible drivers,etc. As I said, I don’t want to do that if I can avoid it (not even certain I can do it). Any ‘off-line’ ideas to suggest?

DBAN

In reply to Thanks guys, but…

DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) is a Linux based tool. It boots it’s own OS so it should pick it up if it is a standard interface.

By the way, what manufacturer is this? It sounds like it is a disaster waiting to happen.

[Author]

Replies