Completly Erasing a Hard Drive , by NSA standards ?
0
shinji_ikari
Mustn't Run Away...
Due to a rather stupid error on my part I need to wipe my HD clean while still leaving it intact. Now I have already done a 35-Pass ,and used Secure Erase from the DOS..will this be enough or does anyone have any other tips ?
1
animefreak_usa
Child of Samael
if you want here something you can do next time... 35 pass... paranoid?
hard disk scrubber http://summitcn.com/downloads/hdscrub33.zip
you know why you need this, overwrite free data so there no recovery of it. remember the fbi is watching your ip.
hard disk scrubber http://summitcn.com/downloads/hdscrub33.zip
you know why you need this, overwrite free data so there no recovery of it. remember the fbi is watching your ip.
0
If you downloaded something ridiculous, it's still logged by your ISP. But frankly, if you've only done something (which happens to be illegal?) once, they won't bother you.
1
Well the typical solution used is DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) - you'll see this one get recommended all over the Internet. But for one of my research papers I studied disk encryption, and as part of that, I spent a fair amount of time reading other people's papers on disk wiping.
Typically whats going on in most disk erasers is unnecessary nowadays. Usually they overwrite data using some sort of bit pattern schedule or possibly even pseudo-randomness. However, the reason this is (was) done so often is back in the day hard disk platters had a wider "stride" - that is tracks were a little further apart, and more charge was stored in a single bit. So a simple zero-write was rarely enough to wipe the disk, because things could often be recovered between tracks using forensic tools, or enough residual charge was left to analyze.
However, today disks have become so dense that we are talking in terms of electron drift and magnetic bit-flip (bits being written so close to each other they are corrupting, we have almost reached the physical limit of the materials). Now, we're advancing beyond this, but usually doing a single-pass zero-write is faster, easier on the hardware, and "good enough."
If you want to know what the NSA does look into FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards). I believe they consider something like 5 passes of pseudo-random data to be "clean"
Basically, what I'm telling you, is not only are you safe, you (like so many others) "over did it" lol
Typically whats going on in most disk erasers is unnecessary nowadays. Usually they overwrite data using some sort of bit pattern schedule or possibly even pseudo-randomness. However, the reason this is (was) done so often is back in the day hard disk platters had a wider "stride" - that is tracks were a little further apart, and more charge was stored in a single bit. So a simple zero-write was rarely enough to wipe the disk, because things could often be recovered between tracks using forensic tools, or enough residual charge was left to analyze.
However, today disks have become so dense that we are talking in terms of electron drift and magnetic bit-flip (bits being written so close to each other they are corrupting, we have almost reached the physical limit of the materials). Now, we're advancing beyond this, but usually doing a single-pass zero-write is faster, easier on the hardware, and "good enough."
If you want to know what the NSA does look into FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards). I believe they consider something like 5 passes of pseudo-random data to be "clean"
Basically, what I'm telling you, is not only are you safe, you (like so many others) "over did it" lol
0
8 passes of random data is considered standard by most security agencies, including the NSA of the United States of America. The chances of someone working at your ISP checking what you've downloaded is one in, well, every customer they have. Trust me, you aren't that special.
