2.5" sata hard drive

TadleyBaggie

Used to use DABS alot, but was let down badly (ordered some urgent bits that they claimed to be in stock with next day delivery, when they didn't turn up I found out they actually had no stock at all but they had still taken the payment). I've used Ebuyer mostly since then.

rash161

vanpopple wrote: »

Although ccleaner is great (i use it) it isnt anywhere near powerful enough to permantly delete data, there are only a few tools that can 100% do it and they cost money.
If you sent me a drive that you had deleted using ccleaner i can guarantee i could get most previous data.
Never risk buying second-hand anyway now that HDDS are so cheap.

(i tested some data using cc 35 passes, and still managed to recover it.)

Not if the drive is encrypted?

S0litaire

vanpopple wrote: »

Although ccleaner is great (i use it) it isnt anywhere near powerful enough to permantly delete data, there are only a few tools that can 100% do it and they cost money.
If you sent me a drive that you had deleted using ccleaner i can guarantee i could get most previous data.
Never risk buying second-hand anyway now that HDDS are so cheap.

(i tested some data using cc 35 passes, and still managed to recover it.)

no expensive software required

I usually just use a Linux boot disk and the "dcfldd" command.

Initial wipe of whole drive with zeros
Then wipe whole drive with urandom data
Then final wipe using a specific string of data to fill the entire drive I usually use "*SecurelyWiped*_"

Or another random 16 character word or phrase (rude one if I'm in a bad mood!) lol

rash161

I've never really understood the ability to retrieve data from a drive if it's been properly overwritten...

We're talking digital systems here? It's either a 0 or a 1, so surely writing "all zeros", "all ones" or just random once over the whole drive should be sufficient?

S0litaire

Most people claim to be able to recover data from drives that have had multiple wipes using random data, but it's usually "a friend of a friend", or the actual drive wasn't properly wiped in the first place.

I've wiped lots of drives in my time and NEVER had an IT/Security expert come to me and say "Hey I managed to recover data from one of your drives last night"

Including the police (Embarrassing incident about an old laptop that I wiped for a "friend" and it turned out she stole it form an ex-bf who took some *ahem* arty pics of her and she wanted them gone for good).

rash161

That's my experience too, I've never seen proof that it can actually be done.

I understand that data is only "marked as deleted" and not actually deleted, I've recovered things in those circumstances myself but surely if you write over every bit available on the drive with a 0, there's no way of seeing what that bit was previously set to?

It seems technically impossible with a digital system, I'm open to any explanations but I've always considered it to be a myth created by law enforcement to exaggerate what they're capable of and make people afraid of them.

S0litaire

It technically *is* possible to recover from wiped drives using the old "scanning electron microscope" method of extracting data!
And we all have one or 2 in the garden shed don't we! ^_~ lol

rash161

I don't think there's much of an issue, I think recovering something that had been wiped with just a single pass would be mostly down to luck, I think the only thing you could really gather from studying a disk in such detail is that someone attempted to securely wipe it.

I think encryption is the best option if you're worried about anything