164 replies to this topic

[MedEvil]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

[sambul61]

Acronis ISO once booted to is fast in wiping any hard drives. Other tools may be slower, it also depends on wipe params and sector size.

[sbaeder]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

so "dban" isn't suitable? It doesn't have a "GUI" per se, but does have an "interface"...even if it is more "dos like"...

Also, are you really trying to do this from "inside" windows? Is it OK to do a reboot, and then actually execute the delete? And not to start a flame war but do you just need an "erase", or are you looking for more?

[MedEvil]

A neighbor and friend, who moved away a few months ago, called me, because he wants to sell his old computer and remembered, me telling him about wiping a hdd rather than smashing it.

Problem is, there is no use in sending him any tool that requires some commandline parameters to work. It has to be simple point and click. i.e. GUI

A program with GUI that could be started from within Windows, but would work on the next reboot, sounded like the best solution.

Since his old computer still had a floppy drive, a solution that runs from floppy would also work, given that it has a GUI he can use.


I thought, i'd might get around mailing him a NaughtyPE.

[Sadeghi85]

ATA Secure Erase is the best and fastest way to securely wipe a hard drive, Parted Magic has a program called Erase Disk:

[sbaeder]

A neighbor and friend, who moved away a few months ago, called me, because he wants to sell his old computer and remembered, me telling him about wiping a hdd rather than smashing it.

Problem is, there is no use in sending him any tool that requires some commandline parameters to work. It has to be simple point and click. i.e. GUI

A program with GUI that could be started from within Windows, but would work on the next reboot, sounded like the best solution.

Since his old computer still had a floppy drive, a solution that runs from floppy would also work, given that it has a GUI he can use.


I thought, i'd might get around mailing him a NaughtyPE.

Well, DBAN (can boot from floppy) and no command line parameters, but old style "UI" (hard to call it graphical ) google it and go to sourceforge sit if you want to see some screen shots...

OR I did some basic searching, and there are other tools inside windows that let you "delete all you files", leave the OS intact, and then securely (?) erase the files you "deleted"...

That might be better than "nuke" the entire HD (including the OS)...

Another thought is that if it has the "restore" function (or CD), run that, then one of these other windows tools that erases the free space, like eraser

[MB_75]

Hi

Erasure is another solution that I use. You get a windows install version with right click options and various standards for wipeing. It also got a portable version with gui.

Also KillDisk

[sambul61]

ATA Secure Erase is the best and fastest way to securely wipe a hard drive

I tried FW encoded wipe option (ATA Secure Erase) using Victoria for DOS floppy image to wipe a 500Gb Seagate HD, and it was significantly slower than Acronis Wipe feature used with the same drive, so I had to switch along the way. Not sure, if Acronis actually invokes ATA Secure Erase too or uses own optimized fast wipe algorithm, but its interesting if someone knowledgeable enough in that subject would comment how wipe speed and quality (completeness) depends on wipe parameters selected by a user, including sector size, etc.

[koawmfot]

at my company we use gdisk from symantec. i run gdisk32 from a pe 2.x environment.

it had a DOD wipe feature that writes zero's a certain amount of times that the DoD considers the drive wiped. it is not fast, but if you want to be certain the drive is clean, what is your rush?

"DoD specifications
GDisk.exe conforms to most current US Department of Defense (DoD) specifications."

symantec page

[bobbintb]

My vote is for dban (darik's boot and nuke). You can burn it to a cd, boot from cd and wipe the drive. Also does DoD wipes.

[jfmiller52]

dban sucks as of late. anything past 1.0.7 doesnt really work with sata drives or multiple drives and the throughput is slow, with the intent on getting you to purchase his commercial solution called eBan. I work for a computer refurbisher and wiping systems is a daily task for me and the best solution i have found is partedmagic. it includes a nice program called nwipe. it's a derived off of dban, but can be run in a terminal window inside of the complete gui. the speed is great and drives wiped with nwipe pass NAID testing. the best feature of it is since it's running from a full blown linux dist, you get the full hardware support of the linux kernel. they also include the secure erase tool, as well as methods for wiping using shred and dd.

definitely check it out.

also as a real bonus, they over a PXE bootable version as well.

[Sudhan]

You don't wanna worry about security!!!
if you already have them True-Crypted!!! & Raided!!!

[Jammrock]

If your friend has a Windows Vista/7/2008+ DVD there is a disk wipe tool built in with a 4-pass DoD wipe option. Boot to the DVD, select your keyboard language, then select repair, a link hidden on the bottom left, at the Install Now screen.

Once the OS is detected enter the Repair tools and pull up the MS DaRT toolset. There is a tool called Disk Wipe. Kind of a pain to get to, but if your old neighbor has the right disk there is no need to burn or prep any other media.

http://technet.micro...x#_Toc241331388

Jammrock

[Sadeghi85]

I tried FW encoded wipe option (ATA Secure Erase) using Victoria to wipe a 500Gb Seagate HD, and it was significantly slower than Acronis Wipe feature used with the same drive, so I had to switch along the way. Not sure, if Acronis actually invokes ATA Secure Erase too or uses own optimized fast wipe algorithm, but its interesting if someone knowledgeable enough in that subject would comment how wipe speed and quality (completeness) depends on wipe parameters selected by a user, including sector size, etc.

Acronis DriveCleanser is partition level wiper: http://www.ocztechno...ll=1#post579607

And: http://www.wildersse...72&postcount=27

Just for speed testing, try that program in Parted Magic or if you're comfortable with terminal try hdparm: https://ata.wiki.ker...TA_Secure_Erase

[costinel]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

:cheers:

the easiest (at least for me) is the following:

download system rescue cd
extract grub4dos, sysrcd.dat, rescuecd and initram.gz
configure grub4dos to load from boot.ini (search the forum how to)
configure grub's menu.lst as this:

title system rescue cd
kernel /rescuecd docache
initrd /initram.igz

you'll end up with linux in ram.
from there you can issue ata secure erase with hdparm

- OR -

just download sysrcd and boot the machine with it and you're directly at hdparm step.

Edited by costinel, 14 January 2011 - 09:51 PM.

[jfmiller52]

If your friend has a Windows Vista/7/2008+ DVD there is a disk wipe tool built in with a 4-pass DoD wipe option. Boot to the DVD, select your keyboard language, then select repair, a link hidden on the bottom left, at the Install Now screen.

Once the OS is detected enter the Repair tools and pull up the MS DaRT toolset. There is a tool called Disk Wipe. Kind of a pain to get to, but if your old neighbor has the right disk there is no need to burn or prep any other media.

http://technet.micro...x#_Toc241331388

Jammrock

Doh! I totally forgot about the wipe feature in DaRT. It's decent and usable, but has nowhere near the amount of options for wiping schemes that nwipe has. Plus i like that in nwipe you can see the drive throughput live as it is wiping, that way if it dips to some ridiculously low number during the wiping, you can just turn it off and destroy the drive since it has clearly failed. so if the wipe and verify completes successfully, it's safe to say that all sectors are good as well.

I've also tried dban, WhiteCanyon's WipeDrive, Active@ Killdisk, Acronis Drive Cleanser, and Paragon's Disk Wiper and nwipe is still the fastest and most robust. Plus it's free!


The downside to ATA Secure Erase is that it won't tell you if the drive has bad sectors or not and there is no progress indicator.


just my two cents.

[bugzapper]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

I have used DriveEraser from vaiosoft on
Bartpe.. freeware

BugZapper

[Antoine RODRIGUEZ]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

Have you tried to cut a tree branch being on that same branch ?

You can't have a program that securely erase your system disk that runs inside the windows for two reasons :
1 - Windows forbid low level access to the hard drive ..... so you can't really erase the hard drive
2 - If the windows is on the same drive that you want to wipe you'll unable to erase it because windows needs the files for it's execution and the execution of your program.

As some have mentioned : Use DBAN. It has an easy interface. You'll want to take a look to the Methods that it has to choose a correct wipe method(type M when inside of DBAN).
Acronis, DD, or many other methods mentioned up to now are not efficient at security level. It is due that it does only erase the FAT, or put 0 on any clusters (witch does not mean that you can't restore your data), or runs under windows.

download DBAN 2.2.6 at : http://www.dban.org/download
It's better to use cd ... so download the ISO and burn it with your burning software or infrarecorder if you don't have one .... if the PC doesn't support CDROM boot so you can connect the hard drive in a computer that is more up to date (up to 14 years old)
Floppy support is discontinued by many software. For the software that still supports it the wiping method is outdated.

Best regards

[Super Tech Hawaii]

Aloha MedEvil,
I have a full automated boot diskette that has a program call "killdisk". This is a disk that I use to destroy all data on all hd on the system. This might work for you If you would like a copy email me at securityx@supertechhawaii.net

Thanks,
supertechhawaii

[rog]

my favorite is mhdd from hdguru

i have got some succesfull hd regeneration with it

rog

[badbak]

http://hddguru.com/s...el-Format-Tool/

this tool will wipe a hdd clean its free software and runs a gui.

[costinel]

I have kind of a stupid question. Does anyone know a disk wiping software, that can be started from within windows to wipe the systemdrive?
Or a solution that exists as a premade floppy image and comes with a gui of some kind?

could a moderator PLEASE remove answers that don't give this man a COMPLETE answer to his question (ie. he only has a windows installation, no mention of cd - although said 'floppy' and wants to destroy the system drive)

[rasker]

Well the answer to his question in complete form is 'no, sorry, not really possible'.

Any software that can do a atapi secure erase is the best/fastest hard disk erase there is. One pass, *every* physical sector erased. In fact there is no other way to delete data that is on re-allocated sectors. All that dod stuff is pretty useless if it doesn't do the re-allocated sectors.

MHDD and Victoria can do it fine. There is a MHDD floppy boot disk. Google 'MHDD' or use Hiren's boot cd (it has a gui! Kind of.)

The steps are:

1) Boot with only the disk you want to erase connected to the pc.
2) set a user password (issue pwd command)
3) issue a fasterase command (type in the password)
4) wait until the disk light goes off
5) un-set the user password (dispwd I think)?


Can't really be any simpler than that.

R

[Antoine RODRIGUEZ]

http://hddguru.com/s...el-Format-Tool/

this tool will wipe a hdd clean its free software and runs a gui.

Low formating does not secure wipe your hard drive.

You can still easily retrieve your files after a low level format.


What is asked is quite impossible due to the fact that you must load the drivers of your hard drive controller and those are a lot and occupy a space that overload the floppy size capacity. You can find some wipe tools that fits in floppy : however you might not find one that works with your computer.
Also you can't wipe a system hard drive under the windows of that same hard drive. (you might want to try but it'll freeze and you'll not finish the wipe)

What I suggest is to be more clear on what is wanted to achive :

1 - Wiping : why ? in order to not retrieve the data or just for reinstalling an operating system without caring about the possibility that the data can be retrieved ?
2 - Booting model : why a floppy ? can't do it with a CD / USB CD or usb key ? can we first boot on floppy to run afterwards something on a cdrom ?
3 - The graphical interface is for that it can be easy to use ? can we rephrase you that the tool must be very easy to use ?

best regards

Edited by Antoine RODRIGUEZ, 15 January 2011 - 01:47 AM.

[badbak]

Low formating does not secure wipe your hard drive.

You can still easily retrieve your files after a low level format.

HDD Low Level Format Tool is a freeware utility for low-level hard disk drive formatting.

* Supported interfaces: S-ATA (SATA), IDE (E-IDE), SCSI, USB, FIREWIRE. Big drives (LBA-48) are supported.
* Supported Manufacturers: Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Western Digital.
* The program also supports low-level formatting of FLASH cards using a card-reader.

This freeware Low Level Format utility will erase, Low-Level Format and re-certify a SATA, IDE or SCSI hard disk drive with any size of up to 281 474 976 710 655 bytes. Will work with USB and FIREWIRE external drive enclosures. Low-level formatting of Flash Cards is supported too. Low Level Format Tool will clear partitions, MBR, and every bit of user data. The data cannot be recovered after using this utility. The program utilizes Ultra-DMA transfers when possible.

WARNING: After running this free low level format tool, the whole disk surface will be fully erased.
Therefore, data restoration will be impossible after using this utility!

http://hddguru.com/s...el-Format-Tool/