Best way to wipe entire hard drive disk so that no data is recovered,

Format it

keep it and sell the laptop without a hard drive

>>57049580
This.

Like with a cloth or something?

>>57049473
Thermite.

>>57049473
Sand the discs

>>57049473

Bleachbit

;^)

>>57049473
Microwave it

>>57049560
>>57049580
>>57049597
>>57049614
>>57049627
>>57049645


Want to know the peculiar thing about who I'm selling the laptop to? I sold it online and the person works in computer hardware. It's basically implied that I have to sell the hard drive disc with the laptop though because I mentioned the operating system being there. I'm pretty sure the people that buy shitty used laptops online want them to extract the personal information.

>>57049473
HDDErase. DBAN. Both are boot disks and obviously not available as programs you run from inside the OS on the hard disk.

HDDErase uses the ATA_SECURE_ERASE command, which is probably the better method. This tells the hard disk to wipe itself, including sectors that have been remapped and aren't accessible by normal means anymore. The downside is you don't know just how it's going about erasing, and have to trust the HDD manufacturer that it won't be recoverable by advanced means like analog signal reconstruction. You also don't get any progress meter.

DBAN generates predefined patterns and random noise and writes that directly to all the sectors on the disk, repeatedly. You can control how many passes of what is written. You do get a progress meter. The downside is it can't erase sectors that have been remapped and aren't accessible anymore. It's also slower.

If you use DBAN, I recommend ~4 random data passes. 4 should be more than enough to prevent any signal reconstruction attacks. The old DoD and Gutmann methods rely on special bit patterns that specifically targeted on disk encodings that haven't been used for decades.

TrueCrypt & DBAN

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>>57049473
wipe it with a cloth or something

>>57049681
I've used TrueCrypt with a random password before as a way to wipe external disks from inside an OS. It's faster than the disk wiper tools I'd tried, and has the same effect of overwriting the whole disk with random bits.

>>57049473
Best bet is to take it out and put a new hard drive in, that way you can advertise it as such- and you won't worry about the data being recovered

>>57049674
he could do that or just putting it out there he could manually erase everything starting with his browser shit passwords ect. go through and erase all shadow copy shit if you use it and finally go through and uninstall all programs and clear all temp files in your control panel by freeing up disc space

now this is the part thats golden. download a movie for every half a gb you had to delete. oh did i forget to mention you need to keep track of this shit because you do. ripping them from dvd's works too

erase the movies repeat. do this 4 times. any data that was erased before you downloaded the movies was on the space the movies will go to. after being written over 4 times its lost forever

>>57049781
"New hard disk" won't raise the sell price enough compared to "fresh Windows install" to fund the HDD purchase though.

>>57049473
linux:
Run this command twice:
#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=8M

Then run this command once
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8M

>>57049473
Nigga, what kind of files you had on it that you are so paranoid about?

>>57049781
I didn't originally encrypt the HDD. I might try erasing everything the regular way, then do fresh install, then encrypt the entire drive, then fresh install again, with some other stuff I'm not going to say here.

dd if=/dev/random of /dev/sda bs=4k

>>57049836
>>57049841
Does this make the hard drive unusable though?

>>57049794
That still doesn't guarantee that all unused sectors will be overwritten or that nothing sensitive is hiding in the registry, some MRU list, some thumbs.db file someplace, etc. There's just too many places that Windows and programs on it store thumbnails, filenames, URLs, snippets of things, etc. Don't forget about the pagefile either, where random snippets of application memory get stashed.

The more you write files to disk, the less likely that things you deleted can be recovered, but you can't guarantee they've been overwritten. Your way also takes a lot longer than running Eraser's "wipe free space" function. That will at least wipe all free space, including things in "cluster tips", the bits of free space following any file whose size isn't divisible exactly by 4096.

>>57049657
You're a retard

>>57049870
no u

>>57049836
Works but slow as FUCK. Use DBAN instead. it uses a way faster random number generator.

>>57049841
4k block size makes it even slower still.

>>57049853
Yeah, it's still usable, you'll just have to do a fresh install of the OS though. It doesn't damage the drive, it just obliterates everything that was stored on it, including the OS.

DBAN and HDDErase do the same but faster.

>>57049853
>Does this make the hard drive unusable though?
no.

You run the urandom twice so that the drive will overwrite the 'slack' blocks, the last time with zero is just so it's zeroed out.

>>57049878
you are faggot, faggot!

>>57049853
lolno

>>57049883
>DBAN and HDDErase do the same but faster.

Faster? How? The constraint of dd is the write speed of the drive. Unless you are on a 386 or something slow as fuck.

>>57049883
>including the OS

What about firmware? Like recovery drive. I know it erases the recovery partition, but what about the recovery drive that allows you to reinstall the operating system by holding a key down during boot. Does it delete that firmware that allows you to create the recovery downloaded from the Internet by holding down a key a boot?

>>57049853
no, but it deletes windows.
however, there's a recovery partition for a reason. use that, and only specify the large partition when you run dd, e.g. /dev/sda2

>>57049921
>What about firmware? Like recovery drive.
gone

fuck that shit. they can figure out how to reinstall the OS on their own.

if you really want you can do dd against the partition of your choice
#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda3 bs=8M
where sda3 is partition you want to kill

>>57049887
Wrong. An HDD maps the same blocks to the same sectors no matter how many times you rewrite them. The only exception is if you have a bad sector and it remaps it. Then the old one becomes inaccessible by normal means and all future writes there go to the new remapped one. If you want to overwrite the old remapped one, use HDDErase or another tool that sends the drive the ATA_SECURE_ERASE command.

You run multiple random passes because of the potential of analog signal recovery attacks. Those are insanely hard to perform and need special equipment. The idea is you read out the signal from the drive head in analog instead of letting the drive decode it. Then you decode it yourself, re-encode the "perfect" representation of that data, and subtract it from the analog signal you captured. Now you're left with a tiny remnant signal. Amplify it and you have the data that was there before it was overwritten. Wash, rinse, repeat, and you can uncover another layer of "ghost" data.

However it's very limited how far back you can go before you hit a point where the remnant signal is lost in noise and no more can be recovered. On a modern drive, you can probably recover at most 1, maybe 2 layers of overwritten data if you're lucky.

>>57049953
>Wrong. An HDD maps the same blocks to the same sectors no matter how many times you rewrite them
yeah you are right. I didn't specify
I was talking about SSDs

>>57049915
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null bs=1M
How fast did that go for you? Unless you got over 100 MB/s your CPU's going to be the limiting factor, not your HDD.

Linux's kernel RNG is not that fast, it's designed to provide potentially higher quality random numbers over sheer quantity of them. A program like DBAN uses an algorithm that is designed to generate more numbers faster.

HDDErase is faster still because it doesn't even send data to the HDD. Instead it tells the HDD to erase itself, then sits and waits patiently until the drive says it's done.

ATA Secure Erase (hdparm --security-erase) or ATA Enhanced Security Erase (hdparm --security-erase-enhanced) if the drive supports it.

https://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html

>>57049967
>SSD
Then use HDDErase. The ATA_SECURE_ERASE command will finish really quickly. For an SSD all you need to do is tell the drive to drop all sectors and garbage collect. No need to waste hundreds of GB of write on your SSD.

Still, I'm not sure if I'd trust any flash device to truly erase my data ever if I had something like state secrets on it. Anything less (including CP) that the CIA wouldn't be willing to spend weeks getting out, I'd trust HDDErase, DBAN, or dd.

>>57050000
Enhanced erase because of
>Secure erase overwrites all user data areas with binary zeroes. Enhanced secure erase writes predetermined data patterns (set by the manufacturer) to all user data areas, including sectors that are no longer in use due to reallocation.

dd can't overwrite these sectors.

Cum on it

>>57050113
I thought that was for cooling CPUs without having to buy thermal paste, not erasing hard disks.

>>57050191
Shit on eet!

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This is the best way.

>>57050257
Only in a designated shitting street.

>>57050309
This is effective. So is bending the platters if they're not glass. The CIA could probably still recover stuff from it, but anybody less determined and well funded would just declare the data lost.

>>57049473

Just fill it with 1's then format it and install a new system. Use a linux live cd and dd.

>>57050333
>The CIA has magical powers

>>57050355
No, they have huge amounts of money and can be extremely determined if they think a drive contains something of national security importance. A platter doesn't need to be in once piece to read out bits with an electron microscope. It just take immense amounts of time and effort by highly skilled people.

>>57050427
>they have huge amounts of money

No, they have your money, your tax dollars to abuse and use against you, while you think it's for your own good.

>>57050560
Yes, it's funded with tax dollars, enormous amounts of tax dollars. The CIA's budget is something like $14.7 billion a year. So if they want something badly enough they're probably going to make it happen if it's at all possible.

I'm not claiming it's for my own good, I'm claiming this is how it is.

If you're trying to wipe data from a drive, you should know who you're trying to keep from getting it. For instance if you're trying to erase porn you don't want your computer illiterate gf to find, simply deleting browsing history and dragging any saved files into system32 is enough. If she's computer literate, private browsing and an encrypted drive. But if you're trying to dispose of military intelligence data of some sort, you probably shouldn't stop until it's a fine dust.

If a hard drive has been encrypted its entire life, does it need to be wiped before sale?

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>>57050681
>The CIA's budget is something like $14.7 billion a year

That's what (You) think the budget is. It's literally state secrets what is the actual budget of intelligence agencies, especially of the black departments/agencies that exist that are entirely top secret. It's even top secret and classified information how many people are employed in these organizations. It could literally be more than 90% that work for the federal government through front organizations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

That's all I have to say about it.

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>>57050681
Google these military/black ops patches.
>NOYFB

>>57050737
Only the headers if anything. The encryption software usually includes a function to destroy the headers so even if someone did guess the password, it would still be useless. Alternately change the password to a long random string or add a keyfile and then wipe that file.

Or since you're just reinstalling and selling it, don't do either. Your attacker won't have the determination to bruteforce passwords even if the secondary header is intact.

>>57050768
The $14.7 billion number is from Snowden. And yeah it could be far larger. Either way that doesn't change my point that if they really want something and it's possible, they'll probably be able to pull it off.

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>>57050952
>Either way that doesn't change my point that if they really want something and it's possible, they'll probably be able to pull it off.

And I was just stating 'why' and 'how' it's possible. It isn't magic, it's the police state/surveillance state in America that makes it possible. It's totalitarianism that makes it possible.

Shills will reply with the usual 'it can't happen here.'
>it 'has' happened here

honestly, just eat the loss and incinerate the hard drive, it's not worth the risk.

>>57050768
>I could tell you but then you em yb deyortsed eb ot evah dluow

>>57051142
Typical shill reply.

>>57051163
I was really just making fun of the patch, anon.

>>57051105
Slow down there, big boy. What's the risk here, and how much is it worth to you? If we're talking browsing history, a Steam account and some pirated movies and porn, you definitely want to wipe the drive, but the best an attacker will do is run Recuva. A single pass of overwriting with zeroes is enough. If it was CP you might do a little more since it would be analyzed by a forensic professional. If it was top secret documents, you should follow the DoD guidelines and would probably do best to degauss, shred, pulverize or smelt the drive.

>>57051105
>honestly, just eat the loss and incinerate the hard drive, it's not worth the risk.
frankly, for a three letter agency, yeah, that's what I'd do.
but to sell to some schmuck on ebay who cares

>>57049837
credit card information,passwords,pictures of peoplre i care about which they can use to threaten me...
but of course you are a nigger you cant comprehend concepts like the right to privacy

>>57049837
Would you allow anyone at anytime, use your laptop with unlimited access to the entire hard drive?
>no, right?

Then why would you allow this after you sell it?

install debian
overwrite all data on drive
uninstall debian
install whatever os you had before
?

If you can't remove the os for some reason, delete everything possible, delete the paging file (windows) or overwrite the swap partition (linux), run bleachbit as administrator and as user, with everything enabled, especially 'wipe free space' and 'log files'). That should be good enough for your purpose.

>>57049473
>no data is recovered
Install a different HDD. Data will always be recoverable as long as you are using magnetic storage.

>>57049798
Price has no weight here. Ensuring no data is recoverable is what was asked.

>>57051785
Oh, and before running bleachbit, create a new user (sperdo or something), delete the old user and delete the old user's entire home directory. Then the bleachbit thing. That's enough if you're just selling it to Joe Blow.

>>57049657

Zero out hard drive
Basically every HDD manufacturer has a utility for "health, diagnostics, and benchmarking" which includes a tool for writing all zeros to a drive. Takes a few hours, usually.

Either reinstall Windows from a recovery image you made of the laptop, or just sell it with the Zero'd and formated HDD and say "The OS license is still attached to the PC, and therefore, yours." and if they wanna whine about how they have to install it themselves, tell them flat out "Leaving an OS intact means personal information could be stolen. Not just from me, but from you. If I were to install Windows for you, you have literally no guarantee I didn't load it with a key-logger, virus, or other malware to steal your personal information. If the hardware lacks any software installed, and you do it yourself, you have every guarantee that any Virus, Malware, or information stolen is your/the users fault. Not mine."

OP here.

>>57051105
>honestly, just eat the loss and incinerate the hard drive, it's not worth the risk.

That's the conclusion I've reached. Just got a brand new disk and going to install it in the laptop I'm selling. Then I'll destroy the old disk. So that's that.

>>57049473
1 pass writing over the drive with all 0s or all 1s is all you need.

>>57052925
wtf do you have on it and why are you so paranoid?

>>57052948
Why are you not 'paranoid?' What you call being paranoid I call being smart.

>>57051496
>>57051549

>>57050427
It's never been done. It's FUD. Today's drives are too dense for electron microscopes to be feasible.

>>57052961
How long have you been on g to become this paranoid??

>>57052925
>>57052948
This. Even a drive that contained illegal stuff could be reused if you do a 4 or so random pass wipe with DBAN.

>>57052961
Because it's FUD. Knowing a thing or two about how data is stored on drives blows away the mindless paranoia.

And even if someone *can* recover data from a 4-times-overwritten drive with an electron microscope, they're going to be paying a pretty highly paid tech hundreds of hours to read out the file table alone. They simply don't want your CP that badly.

Besides if they cared that much about nabbing you, it would be far easier to get you on NSA PRISM logs or simply planting drugs on you and then busting you for that.

>>57052981
It's suckers like you that make ransomware and even scareware very lucrative. I almost feel sorry for you.

>>57052964
I agree with you on this. And you also support my earlier point here >>57050560

That our tax dollars fund the employees who get paid to abuse us, spy on us, wage war on us and not at all question that they have no freedom.

>>57052995
The only way someone can be this paranoid about this are people with cp. Who special arw you that anyone would actually go tru all this effort to find your personal information?

>>57053069
>The only way someone can be this paranoid about this are people with cp. Who special arw you that anyone would actually go tru all this effort to find your personal information?

The only way someone can be this stupid are people have low IQs.

>>57053069
Even them. From what I gather there's enough of them out there, and enough dumb enough to leave it laying around unencrypted or on their phones, that the police can catch those easily and look good. I've heard the FBI also runs dragnet operations with Javascript based malware on seized Tor sites to catch more. All this without spending what it would take to extract one overwritten hard disk with an electron microscope, if it's even possible.

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>>57053069
>>57053102

>ever heard of the use of computing in the service of the Holocaust?
Mass surveillance is the same precursor to totalitarianism. It's the same reason they're pushing for gun control and destroying the second amendment. Hitler also passed anti-gun legislation, which led to minorities having no protection.

And yes, the author of this book is the investigative journalist Edwin Black. And yes he is Jewish. I dare you to try and use him being Jewish as an argument. Please get /pol/ish and mock that he's Jewish writing against Nazism, I double dare you. Because if you do you still support my argument because you would be acknowledging the conspiracy that is also turning American totalitarian. And yes it is a Jewish conspiracy. And no I'm not an anti-Semite and I hate /pol/. /pol/ is a JIDF front. Unironically worshiping Hitler in the current year is a decade old meme and it's stale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

>>57052948
>>57052981
>>57053069
Since you have nothing to be paranoid about, please prove it to everyone by posting your real name, home address, birth date, photo, ssn, driver's license number, usernames and passwords, bank account numbers, and credit card numbers. You have nothing to be afraid of, trust me. Nothing illegal, nothing to hide, right? Waiting...

>>57053181
Every time I edit a typo in a post, everyone always replies to the first post. Every time. That delay in being able to delete the first post is the reason why, they should fix that bug. lol.

But yeah I agree with you.

>>57053172
>And yes, the author of this book is the investigative journalist Edwin Black. And yes he is Jewish. I dare you to try and use him being Jewish as an argument. Please get /pol/ish and mock that he's Jewish writing against Nazism, I double dare you. Because if you do you still support my argument because you would be acknowledging the conspiracy that is also turning American totalitarian. And yes it is a Jewish conspiracy. And no I'm not an anti-Semite and I hate /pol/. /pol/ is a JIDF front. Unironically worshiping Hitler in the current year is a decade old meme and it's stale.
Someone sounds a little insecure and defensive.

>>57053214
>argumentum ad hominem

That's all you got?

>>57053181
>having all that info on a computer.

boy, I sure hope that laptop wasn't connected to the internet, right...... r... right?

>>57053214
You just did the same thing shills always do on these particular topics. First you ad hom with namecalling people as pedos and then you continue ad hom. Next tactic is straw man arguments that you'll do, trying to refute arguments that I've never made to derail the fact that you have no arguments, only logical fallacies. Same shit in every thread with you shillcucks. 0% arguments, 100% shilling.

>>57053248
But I didn't.

Meanwhile you went all on about DONT NAME THE JEW before anyone else even got the chance to.

>>57053256
I did it to prove what you were going to do. You know I'm right about you, that you were going to mention him being Jewish. You're that predictable, it's not like you're original, I've heard this same shit you shills say.

Instead of arguing about the subject here >>57053172 , you're bitching about the fact that I beat you to your own next ad hom lol.

>>57053283
I actually wasn't going to say anything. Keep projecting.

>>57053302
>I actually wasn't going to say anything.

You still haven't said anything. And you won't. Now you will get silent, go into obscurity for a few minutes, then you'll pop up acting like you're another anon to continue shilling like the pro-police state shillcuck you are.

>>57049657
If you actually format (0-out each bit, will take some time) then it can't be recovered.

Some claim that it is possible, but to date, no modern capacity drive that has been properly 0'd out has EVER been recovered.

Some say big agencies are hiding the tools, but it's clearly out of the scope of whoever you're selling it to, nor would they give a shit about you if they could.

>>57055640
>Some claim that it is possible, but to date, no modern capacity drive that has been properly 0'd out has EVER been recovered.
>trust me guise

>>57049473
first thing you do after buying is setup full drive encryption
then you can just wipe it before getting rid of it
no other way is secure

>>57055721
a 3 pass wipe would be faster and more efficient

>>57049473
>dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX iflag=nocache oflag=direct bs=4096

>>57052002
101% this

>>57052002
While I agree with the idea, persistent threats could still exist (uefi/bios) and therefore your statement is inaccurate

BlecahBit, no contest. The only app that guarantees to make intent unprovable.

>>57049473
dban 6 times

>>57051142
you're a little bit aspie, aren't you.

if windows, just use cipher /w