Formating Hard Drive - Military Style

[jmichna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naz

Are their many people out there that are in the market for preowned computers to go through the trouble to retrieve information off a formated HD?, using the old fashion format c: prompt....

Depends on the previous owner... wouldn't you like to get your hands on the discarded hard drive of someone like an Alan Greenspan, or a Carl Ichan or even a Michael Jordan... you get the idea. Format C: just doesn't cut it... too many good recovery tools exist.

Imagine your "wealthy neighbors"... what do they invest in... who do they correspond with.... hey... they just threw out their old PC....

I guess I'm just a tad paranoid.

[robexe]

Anyone here actually go out, pick up a used computer, and tried to spy on the pre user?

That sounds a bit shadey!

[e980238]

You would be surprised the number of times I have picked a computer out of a garbage can and took it home to find that not only did it work, but they left their name, address, and misc other financial data in tact ... not EVEN a format.

[filipino]

haha just get a magnet then stickit into the hardrive hahaha... that will erase all the data

[crouse]

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Quote:

What is Eraser?
.................................................. ............................. Why use Eraser?
.................................................. ............................
Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS.
Eraser is FREE software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.

The patterns used for overwriting are based on Peter Gutmann's paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" and they are selected to effectively remove magnetic remnants from the hard drive.

Other methods include the one defined in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual of the US Department of Defence and overwriting with pseudorandom data. You can also define your own overwriting methods.

Top reviews from the most popular software sites and magazines confirm that Eraser is one of the best security tools available for Windows.

Eraser has over 2.5 Million Users Per Year!

[filipino]

also wipedrive

http://www.whitecanyon.com/index.php

Just to let others know this exist

[jmichna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by e980238

You would be surprised the number of times I have picked a computer out of a garbage can and took it home to find that not only did it work, but they left their name, address, and misc other financial data in tact ... not EVEN a format.

e980238m is right on... I happen to live in the Chicago 'burbs... I imagine a lot of folks at TechIMO would be amazed at what gets put out in the trash.... and the old stuff does contain SS#, names, account numbers, passwords, etc.

I could do a decent local business just offering to wipe computers of their content prior to discarding/trading/selling.

[samwichse]

The best way, that even defeats electron microscopes is to write random data to the drive repeatedly.

Far, far better than 0's, as with repititions there's no consistancy.

Sam

[StealthyV]

last summer, my dad picked up four pc's about to be discarded from a law firm he was doing business with (insurance).

he brought them home, and they all booted up. Pentium one's, with 65megs ram each, running Win95. the hdds had between 400mb and 900mb disk space.

they weren't formatted, but most documents were erased. I could boot into them and read the law firm name and some details. I wasn't going to use my newfound knowledge for evil, I just wanted to see if the computers worked.

I'm just glad that law firm is in New Jersey, and not further north where they might represent someone I know...to be so lax with data isn't good for business.

~Branson

[paul9]

Quote:

Originally Posted by samwichse

The best way, that even defeats electron microscopes is to write random data to the drive repeatedly.

Far, far better than 0's, as with repititions there's no consistancy.

Sam

look for peter guttman's homepages. he writes some interesting stuff on this, and has specified wipe patterns (which include random or psuedorandom data) specifically chosen to wipe data securely. although he states that no matter how you do the wipe, data will be recoverable from certain areas of the disk with the right equipment.