When it comes down to erasing your data on a hard drive, dragging files into a recycle bin and hitting empty will not cut it. Data recovery software programs like
RecoverMyFiles and
ZAR can be purchased and will most likely recover deleted files emptied from the recycle bin. These are great programs to use if you lost files due to the format, corruption of your hard drive, virus, Trojan infection or unexpected system shutdown or software failure. They have been found successful on numerous file systems including FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS. But what if you want to get rid of a file for good?
It turns out your hard disk drive has a built-in system for the secure erasure of data. When you delete a file on your operating system, all the "delete" does is erase the files' reference information. Your OS cannot find it, but the data is still there. A typical file recovery program looks at the data in blocks of which your OS doesn't use anymore.
If you keep sensitive information on a disk like business, medical and financial records, simple deletion will not be enough to protect the data; especially after the equipment disposal. Besides identity theft, you might be in bigger trouble.
A secure erase is a set of commands, something that is embedded in most ATA/SATA hard drives built since 2001 and is disabled by most motherboard BIOSes. Secure erase overwrites every single track on the hard drive. That includes the data on so called "bad blocks", the data left at the end of partly overwritten blocks, etc. Simply speaking, there is no data to be recovered after secure erase. The National Security Agency and the National Institute for Standards and Testing (NIST) provide higher security rating for secure erase than external block overwrite software that you would have to buy.
Employing secure erase isn't something for everyone. There is only one approach to accomplish this, and yes it is free. The
preferred approach is a small DOS-based
Secure Erase utility that can be downloaded
here. The second approach, among many others, is an open source, self-contained boot floppy, external block overwrite utility called
Boot and Nuke, which can be downloaded
here.
Secure Erase is a DOS-based utility, which also securely erases all data on ATA/SATA hard disk drives (does not support SCSI) on Intel architecture computers. It offers the option to run the drive internal secure erase command, security erase unit, based on the ATA specification by the T13 technical committee. It provides four drive erase options: secure erase unit, fast erase, single pass overwrite and multi-pass overwrite.
Secure Erase meets current federal and state laws and is NIST compliant according to federal data sanitization document NIST 800-88, which states that acceptable methods include executing the in-drive
Secure Erase command, degaussing a drive, and physical destruction.
Boot and Nuke is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks. It has support for all available drivers for SCSI disks, IDE, PATA and SATA disks. It runs on all 32-bit x-86 class computers. It supports Microsoft platforms including Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT 3.0/3.1/3.5/4.0 and Windows 2000/XP and securely destroys FAT, VFAT and NTFS file systems. Furthermore,
Boot and Nuke supports UNIX platforms including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, BeOS and QNX and securely destroys ReiserFS, EXT and UFS file systems.
Instructions for using Secure Erase:
- Download HDDerase here.
- Prepare a bootable floopy, recordable CD-R or USB DOS bootable disk. To make a floppy DOS boot disk, download and run DOS 6.22 boot disk maker found here.
- Erase the two Qbasic files from the created floppy to make enough room to copy �HDDerase.exe� onto the disk.
- Copy the executable �HDDerase.exe� to the bootable media.
- Set the correct priority boot order in the system BIOS.
- Type in �hdderase� at the system DOS prompt.
- All ATA hard disk drives connected to the main system board will be identified and their information displayed.
- Continue with instructions provided on the screen.
Instructions for using Boot and Nuke:
- Download DBAN here.
- Double-click on the executable to install DBAN.
- Run the program and continue with instructions provide on the screen. Instructions for CD-R discs and floppy disks on Linux can be found here.
Secure Erase has been approved at a higher security level than any external wipe software. It is faster and complaint with the U.S. government standards and practices. Boot and Nuke is an effective but much slower external disk wiper. It is not NIST certified and does not meet legal requirements. Furthermore, in researching commercial disk wiping products, nothing could be found that say they utilize the security erase commands embedded in the ATA/SATA disk drives. The products emphasize providing Gutmann, U.S. DoD 5220.22-M and other data overwrite methodologies, but nothing about secure erase commands, which are the very commands built into the most widely used type of drives.
If you need to erase sensitive data found on your hard disk
securely, via
Secure Erase, and don't have the technical skills to do it, please contact
WEBPIECE. They will be more than happy to do it for you!
