Best hdd eraser or formatting

terence_fdes

terence_fdes

wizened Dinosaur
Level H
Hi,

Need help on which is the best hdd disk formatting software that will 100% delete everything that exists on it - hidden files, registry, etc ..... so that I can start totally afresh.

Note: No software should be able to retrieve or restore any data on it thereafter.

Is "Active@Killdisk" good enough ?
 
Hi Terry,

I have used HDD Low Level Format tool for that purpose but it was very long time. I heard about Active@killdisk, it is also good but I don't think it is free or you are planning to buy license for it.

I am noob in such area, haven't formatted/erased my drive for years. I have an image of my OS partition which I taken when I installed everything first time. Till then whenever face slow performance or daughter delete something while playing around, I restore that backup image. OS back to day 1.

But how does it help? Usually these tools are used when we provide our HDD to 3rd party for RMA. Does it help in increasing performance?
 
Best option would be to overwrite all the free space with copies of video files after making a quick format of the drive. After this do another quick format to reclaim disk space. Even if a person uses disk recovery software, he might only get the video file copy at most which would be useless.
 
You can also use Eraser or Darik's Boot and Nuke, anyways more than 3 passes would not be needed I guess until you have some ultra confidential stuff you don't want anyone knowing about
 
Thanks for all the responses guys.

I need a software that will also work on a single 4TB drive + 3 other 1TB drives.

@6pack ... the video files (even large ones), copying/deleting/copying & 'quick formatting' (using windows built-in tools) even multiple does not work (even on RAID) as I have seen a couple of years ago when we used a software to restore data. I do not remember the name of the sw.... but we were able to recover all data from over 4 years ....
When during the course of 4 years, I had used the hdd's multiple times (video work).

Today... I need a powerfull sw that can erase every shred of data from each of my 4 hdd's ..... I need to install a critical software for my work (not licensed) that is able to recognise '100%' clean drives.... as even reinstalling windows (licensed) on the same system does not work.....

The above software leaves traces of its cracked licensing in various places ..... so that on the same system it becomes impossible to reinstall it again (this software.... which unfortunately is EOL today).... yet I am desperate to use it. It is also unique in that it installs and performs best when installed ONLY ... in 'administrator' login ..... however it does also work with user login provided the installation is perfect (with all drives fresh n new).

I understand that part of my quest to solve my problem is on the borderline of violating the terms & conditions that TE has to discuss such issues.... and I will hold no grudge if the mods delete this thread.

I have intentionally not named the software that I am so desperate to install for my work as folks who know me also know what I am talking about..... as I have used this software for well over 11 years. It remained the best software in the world for over 8 years (because it could Never be cracked..... coz its license was 'hardware bound'.... and the entire system & hardware too came with the license costing almost 1 crore at its peak), thereafter .... things changed with growing competition and it was made open to any customer to install on their own hardware.

So recommend me a military grade software or pm me ..... something that can wipe out literally everything on my hdd's.

I do not have an option of asking my bosses for a fresh system

I am using an Intel X79SR board with 24Gigs ram ( I discarded 8GB as I had problems), a quadro 4000 card....
1 TB - primary drive for OS etc
4 TB - MEDIA storage
and 2 x 1 tb drives for my project data work. Win 7 prof is licensed.

(I want to reinstall and reformat everything.... I have already done it twice... but no success and on 2 systems).
NOTE: the same version of the software installed successfully the first time.... however as I changed 2 hdds it ran into various problems.... and thats where I am stuck for the passt 8 days.

Folks around here have never heard of an ssd drive and I do not have instant & immediate software or hardware support from the vendors.... so I am on my own and hope the TE community can guide me.

Terry

@vivek.krishnan, @ALPHA17 .....et al
 
actually its pretty easy. just run a dd command and you will be good to go.

Code: 
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda
here the if points to null device so your sda will be written with zeros. i.e., zero fill.
Code: 
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda
here you fill the sda with random data.

I suggest you to run the commands using a linux live cd or use something like cygwin

PS: if you are not sure, you can run the commands multiple times to overwrite with junk. thats how most soft wares do it.
 
@gauravH .... I have never had reason to re- install my software earlier as it was always licensed or covered under AMC.... However circumstances are different today.

@booo .... this sounds all greek to me (never dabbled with linux). However let me read up more
 
@Terry, didn't know what software you used. Let me know if you remember its name. I had used stellar or recuva to try to recover some data from one of my backup hdd's. Problem I found was all data was overwritten by video files. I could see file names of some, but when I went to recover them, the software threw error that the file was lost or incomplete and could not be recovered.

Doesn't changing file partition format wipe out the previous data? Ex from ntfs to ext4 and back. You could use gparted, make a full format to ext4, fill the disk with 0/1 or some encrypted files of 100MB size. Then format it to ntfs again. Eraser can fill a hdd with junk encrypted files of any size I think.
 
As you haven't already tried this software with just wiping off your hard drive, chances are that this method may not work. Such costly software which are tied to hardware, seldom work after tinkering with the hard disk. I have used lots of hard disk nuking software but some files can still be easily recovered. Following are two methods which worked for me:

1) Install the software in a virtual machine and reset the machine state after each use. You can have the admin rights but I don't know how your software will treat it.

2) Encrypt the drive with TrueCrypt. It's very small tool and can be used in portable mode: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads
a) Your software cannot recover anything from a drive encrypted with TrueCrypt.
b) You can format the drive afterwards, to fill it with zeros. Maybe that's how your software sees it as a 'fresh' drive.
c) Typically, this is how you'll encrypt the whole drive:

01.png 02.png 03.png 04.png 05.png​
 
If the software is as secure as you say, I am not sure these simple data wiping techniques will be able to cheat it.
Have you tried this wiping earlier and been successful?

You'll probably need something mentioned here.
http://zw-byteme.blogspot.in/2011/04/how-to-clean-hidden-sectors-on-your.html

@booo has already mentioned the commands and some softwares (bootable images) mentioned here might help, but writing over with video files etc will not be helpful.

good luck.
 
Dunno if I have got some of the guys out here confused...
I do not want to encrypt anything.
I just want to DELETE everything from all my hdds - including C (which I will do later on another system).

I have just started KillDisk Pro and selected 3 hdds - method used is
US DoD 5220.22-M (ECE)
The write head passes over each sector seven times (0x00, 0xFF, Random, 0x96, 0x00, 0xFF, Random). There is one final pass to verify random chars by reading.
Estd time : 48 hours

Then
I would like to use another software to tell me whether the hdds are 100% empty.

Querry : Is there any way in which professional softwares can store any information on the motherboard, ROM and in BIOS ?

I hope this procedure ends by monday morning.

Keeping my fingers xrossed .... or else I am fu¿k*d
 
Thanks @axeman ... however I am sceptical whether WD or even Seagate for that matter would provide the same results that some of the 3rd party apps claim. The algorithms that they use would be quite basic.

All my hdds are WD black.
 
terence_fdes said:
@booo .... this sounds all greek to me (never dabbled with linux). However let me read up more
Click to expand...
let me put it this way. when you boot your machine using linux live cd/usb. All the hdds will be ennumerated on scsi sub system. so /dev/sda would be first hdd and /dev/sda1 would be first partition on sda, and so on...

1. boot your machine using linux live cd/usb
2. open a terminal session using root privileges. or if you are using ubuntu, use sudo command.
3. list the hdds in your machine using lsblk command
Code: 
#lsblk
NAME  MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    1  68.3G  0 disk
├─sda1  8:1    1  716M  0 part /boot
├─sda2  8:2    1    8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda3  8:3    1  59.6G  0 part /
sr0    11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
4. execute the dd command to wipe the data and partition information on the block device. i.e., sda in this case.
Code: 
#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda oflag=direct
here sda is the parent of all the sda* partitions so, even the partition data and everything will be over written with random data. if stands for input file and of stands for output file. so the data on /dev/sda is written with the data from /dev/urandom oflag is to specify that we want to do a directio and not cached io. since we are not specifying offset and lengths to the dd command, it will overwrite the entire length of the of which is the hdd.

you can run the same command few times if you want to be multiple sure that data is gone. and btw, dd is hands down THE fastest way to do it.
 
terence_fdes said:
Querry : Is there any way in which professional softwares can store any information on the motherboard, ROM and in BIOS ?
Click to expand...
BIOS flash memory is usually very small and used only to store the settings that are required by that particular hardware. usually the hardware serial number and other settings. No software can use it to store personal data as flash is costly and usually very small and has limited burn cycles.

lifehack: next time you install anything, just enable the bit locker on your file system. this makes sure that data written on the hdd is encrypted and no one else can access it except you unless they have your password. so next time erasing the system becomes easy.
 
Off the topic.

Or better use Virtual machines (if application allows) for such purpose.
That is the best way to test the tools without buying license/trials and destroy the VMs after that, leaves no traces in the native/host OS.
Keep a backup of VM so that you don't have to setup/install OS everytime.
 
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