To make sure that data is not recoverable

B

becool773

Adept
Hi,

A cousin is selling his old rig to someone. If they like it then they might take it along with the ssd+hdd. There are many softwares which use the pass methods to make sure that personal data from a drive is not recoverable but they take a lot of time. Is there any software which erases the drives, either one by one or all together, fully so that time is saved in instances like this?

Thanks
 
I've used the personal version of darik's boot and nuke [https://dban.org/] . It does take time though. This works for HDDs and not SSDs.

For SSDs, I read that it's not as simple as HDDs. There's always a chance of recovering data. The easiest method [although tedious] would be to format it and fill the drive up completely. Do this 3-4 times if you really want to be thorough.
 
becool773 said:
Sir almost all softwares that I found were giving an estimated time of 6-7 hours that is why I asked here. Sorry to bother you.
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Why do you think they take that much time time ? Keep in mind that 'not recoverable' and 'fast' are opposing forces when it comes to wiping a disk. The faster the wipe, the easier it will be to recover the data.
 
ibose said:
Why do you think they take that much time time ? Keep in mind that 'not recoverable' and 'fast' are opposing forces when it comes to wiping a disk. The faster the wipe, the easier it will be to recover the data.
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I understand completely. But from what I have read even 1 pass is more than ok for an average user. I am just looking for the "fastest" app among them all.
 
Normally I fill the HD with junk data like movies or some series that is easily available on the internet so if someone recovers, be my guest. Just make sure to fill it completely, don't mind leaving few KB's left
 
lockhrt999 said:
I think it's a very good estimate. Only hammer is quicker.
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Drill machine.

becool773 said:
I understand completely. But from what I have read even 1 pass is more than ok for an average user. I am just looking for the "fastest" app among them all.
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On a serious note, just do 1 pass of 0s on HDD and Secure erase SSD. No one cares about your data, no one has the time to recover it unless they know there's something very valuable in it. If you care so so much about it, destroy the drives or don't sell them. And please google about how to do the stuff I mentioned. It's pretty straight forward in Parted Magic which I use.
 
This is a valid concern especially if you have ever stored crypto mnemonics or keys in plaintext. Like after a quick format of a few seconds, even a simple grep will be able to recover the data. In such cases 6-7 hours seems justified.

But if you are talking about non-plaintext data like intimate jpgs, then copying data (large files) to fill the drive should be sufficient.

Recently I got refurb 256 GB flash drives off Amazon and was able to recover someone's wedding videos and pics.

So like all security questions this depends on your threat model and the value of the asset you are securing.
 
kartikoli said:
Normally I fill the HD with junk data like movies or some series that is easily available on the internet so if someone recovers, be my guest. Just make sure to fill it completely, don't mind leaving few KB's left
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Wont help. I have recovered data with 10 pass deep means data written 9 times yet recovered 70-85%.
Better to wipe it with at least 2 wipes.

16 Wipe Methods

, DiskDeleter offers 16 data deletion methods.
diskdeleter.com diskdeleter.com
 
nRiTeCh said:
Wont help. I have recovered data with 10 pass deep means data written 9 times yet recovered 70-85%.
Better to wipe it with at least 2 wipes.

16 Wipe Methods

, DiskDeleter offers 16 data deletion methods.
diskdeleter.com diskdeleter.com
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Did you managed to recover the previous data or the current bogus data that we overwrite to erase existing data. What I meant is if I have some personal pics then I would overwrite the disc with some movies from internet and make copies of then to fill the disk completely. You can easily recover that data but will you be able to recover originals pics or the movie that I've overwritten (I don't mind someone recovering a movie but the pics, Hell No thats not cool)
 
I think the fastest way is to use a dd command.
Boot using linux boot usb. And run ‘dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc(drive device name)’
Basically will fill entire drive with zeros.
You could also fill it with /dev/urandom but it will be cpu bound as the system has to generate random data.
You could also do unbuffered writes but that would be a little slower. The above command would be limited by the drive’s write speed.

Other ways are to just do a sg_zap all which would destroy the partion tables and stuff or using dd only to write first few mb sectors which has partition data. But disk recovery softwares would be able to recover files.

On other note: drives in data centers go through physical blenders and never leave the site.
 
kartikoli said:
but will you be able to recover originals pics or the movie that I've overwritten
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There are data recovery specialists that can do that with special tools. I read about it. It's also why macOS used to offer 32 passes of thorough deletion to make sure data isn't recoverable.
 
lockhrt999 said:
There are data recovery specialists that can do that with special tools. I read about it. It's also why macOS used to offer 32 passes of thorough deletion to make sure data isn't recoverable.
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I am not sure if thats possible because when we overwrite data and the HD is completely full then there is no physical space left to store previous data. I am not sure though but if the disk is full the data can't be stored anywhere else, how can they recover previous data.
 
kartikoli said:
I am not sure if thats possible because when we overwrite data and the HD is completely full then there is no physical space left to store previous data. I am not sure though but if the disk is full the data can't be stored anywhere else, how can they recover previous data.
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I'm not saying you can recover using your default HDD header that comes with your HDD. There are specialized tools which can read magnetic imprints of the last data. You take the platter out of the HDD and put it into these tools. I don't know how these work but yeah there are some expensive tools. Last time I read in 2000 that some company was able to recover data of 7 full rewrites. Maybe technology is much advanced now.
 
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