I recently bought an old external drive for spare parts to replace a pcb that had blown on a disk in my possession (thanks again to folks here for help in that regard). This leaves me with a second hand drive whose provenance I am ignorant of. I could bin it but multiple back ups seem like a good idea to me (having since experienced the near-folly of singular back ups). Still, I'd like to wipe the thing so as to be sure there are no terrorist plots / doctored photos of Shirley Temple etc on the thing, before I add it to my multiply-redundant back up hardware.

Do folks here have a preferred method, bearing in mind the disk may have the odd bad sector? Techniques that allow wiping over USB would also be preferred.

Looking forward to your comments. Cheers.

you have Multiple-redundant backup hardware implemented but don't know how to secure wipe, or google for it? ok

http://www.dban.org/

dc3dd & dcfldd are good

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Phoenix Computer Forensic Laboratory
http://www.databack.ir

Love you too HaQue

Seriously, some people take offense from prickly characters, but I view them as loveable eccentrics, probably because I've a rep for being kinda like that.

However, I've long since taken the advice offered to the late, great, Bill Hicks by air-heads : "it takes more energy to frown than smile!"

And it takes more energy to post than just keep unhelpful comments to oneself.

You seem to have misconstrued my question. I asked "which tools do gurus use", by which I meant HDDGURU members, such as yourself. Obviously I can google to see what other people suggest / sell / ramp, but I was hoping to find out what tools people who have a specific insight of forensics use, as I figured these sorts must have a worthwhile opinion.

Thanks for that.

Just about any "erasing" software will fill an HDD with a default pattern or one of your choice. Run several passes and your data will definitely be unrecoverable. One of the possible issues foreseen is doing this over USB interface in conjunction with the HDD's condition.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Quite. I wrote a lil batch file, might as well show it here:



... that simply grows a 4Kb text file (make your own in notepad) by replication until it fills the entire disk (though this clogged up resources at 40Gb so the file "BIG.TXT" needed renaming before running the batch file again).

However, it clearly will not write to bad sectors, and I'm not at all sure anything that will work over uSB is likely to do that (USB often need the OS running, so writing to bad sectors may become tricky).

I was referring more to the fact that the HDD will likely hang/freeze preventing successful pattern filling pass, especially over USB and Windows.

As far as "writing to bad sectors", not sure this is feasible as result of HDD design.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Neither Roadkil's Disk Wipe, nor, unsurprisingly, my little batch file, have fallen over (both over USB), but then again, why would they if they have only been tasked to write to good sectors?

We were talking theory. Per that specific drive we won't know until attempted. So it seems like it worked out. Nice.

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Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

yes I should have omitted my first sentence. I definitely have been taking a rather poor attitude to some questions lately, and probably more to do with a multitude of issues like:

computer "shut down on me" and being accused of not providing a good enough IT environment: FIX, plug it back in.
Printer will not print and being told the printer choice was rubbish: FIX, turn the printer on.
USB drive not saving files, why did I supply crappy drives?? : FIX, actually save the damn files to the USB, not the network f:
the list goes on.

So yes I take your point, I was not being eccentric, was the other.

Though I did think the link was helpful

Very gracious of you to come back with that, especially given, post-count-wise, I'm a nobody.

As to your own woes, I really do feel or you matey. If Oscar Wilde was around today, I'm sure he'd ironically declare that no knowledge should go unpunished.

And you're right, your link was a good response to my question, for which I thank you.

Post count is something I never look at. It in no way reflects knowledge, skillset or any other quality another member may need. Many, Many people come here, get their issue fixed or posts:1 answered and never return. Quite a valid thing to do. I hang around here because, regarding the interaction, the people seem to be a good bunch with just enough disagreements in certain areas to make it interesting. There is a number of interesting topics at times and if you want to learn, more than you could poke a stick at.

Anyway it would be good to hear what you chose and why others you considered didn't cut it.

Just to make it more ironic, lol

After running my lil batch file I used Roadkil's Disk Wipe, both of which executed over USB. Disk Wipe reassuringly left the disk in need of formatting, suggesting it had wiped pretty extensively. I also understand that the MFT can be left behind, so attempted to overwrite this with some VBA (executable from excel) that created some 300,000 files (empty text files) with (min) 69 character names. I figured for a disk that was 10 years old, this should cut it for home, back-up use. The idea is to overwrite any names left behind in the MFT.

I then reformatted for good measure.

If anyone is interested in overwriting the MFT (having already wiped the data), I'll paste the VBA here.

Hi Connor

"Preferred method" would depend on job but for the one you highlighted:

Could you not repurpose an old PC and run a util disk from CD?
Also prefer native cables here rather than USB.

Far easier and safer to use that with *only* the drive you wish to wipe than risk inadvertently wiping something on a running system by mistake.

One program to try is MHDD. Erase command aside it also incorporates a number of other useful disk utilities.
Scanning for errors first could help you identify a drive as an asset rather than a liability.
Sticking an unknown quantity on your main system could have dire consequence too from just stalling the OS to possibly destroying data or hardware.

Aside; always check the drive is wiped too, with some form of hexdump, as one util (name escapes me atm) has 2 versions side by side. One of which is write-disabled.

One wipe should suffice for internal redeploy.

Kern

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Когда хочется кушать – съешь всё.
Голод не тётка!

Or you could even try some software from this very site.


http://hddguru.com/software/Wipe-My-Disks/

Thanks Lynched & digitalferret for your input.

I've archived your advice locally and downloaded HDDGuru's own wipe utility. Taken with df's idea of re-purposing an old PC, the HDDG util sounds like a winner for when I do this next.

Thanks again.