Is Writing Over A Hard Drive 7 Times Enough?
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Is Writing Over A Hard Drive 7 Times Enough?
Has anyone seen the news lately about used hard drives with confidential data on them?
The Register: Missile data, medical records found on discarded hard disks
I was wondering if using a hard drive eraser program is enough. I am trying out a program that erases files by writing over them 7 times. I hope it is enough for almost any person that would get a hold of my hard drive after I have discarded them.
I have discarded two hard drives before and one of them worries me. The hard drive crashed, but I could still read most of the data on the drive. I was required by Dell to send it to them because they replaced it under warranty. I am willing to bet they tested the drive, confirmed it was bad, and tossed it in the trash. The other drive I am not so worried about because when it failed, it was part of a RAID 0, so it only contains half of the data in small stripes.
Right now, I have three hard drives that I am not using, 20GB, 40GB, and an 80GB. Since they have been boxed up for awhile, I am going to erase them now so that way I don't accidentally throw them away with confidential data on them.
Re: Is Writing Over A Hard Drive 7 Times Enough?
I think zeroing the drives is probably better or is that effectively what you are doing? You should be able to find software to do that from the drive manufacturer's site.
Re: Is Writing Over A Hard Drive 7 Times Enough?
DBAN is what I think the US government uses, and from the homepage, Canada as well, and it looks like the DoD for the US uses up to 7 passes to completely wipe out data, possibly less. If you really want to scrub a drive and have some time to kill, I'd recommend it as it works.
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Re: Is Writing Over A Hard Drive 7 Times Enough?
I had a chance to research it a little more and the program I am using uses the Department of Defense's method where pseudorandom data is written over the data on the hard drive 7 times. Once, or even three times, may be enough, but if it is good enough for the DoD, it works for me.
This is what I would really like: Hard drive shredder
I have some old SCSI drives that I used on my server, a couple 9.1GB, a couple 18.6GB, and one of the 18.6GB is a full-sized 3.5" hard drive (about 2" thick!). There are some places that you can send the hard drive to have them shredded. I will consider it for my SCSI drives because I don't want to have to take apart my server just to erase my old SCSI drives.
This is what I would really like: Hard drive shredder
I have some old SCSI drives that I used on my server, a couple 9.1GB, a couple 18.6GB, and one of the 18.6GB is a full-sized 3.5" hard drive (about 2" thick!). There are some places that you can send the hard drive to have them shredded. I will consider it for my SCSI drives because I don't want to have to take apart my server just to erase my old SCSI drives.
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