Erasing a Hard Drive? Not so Fast... - Comments Page 2

Bob, thanks for the answer, though environmental issues often take back-seat to paranoia. In general I was just wondering if a microwave would work to scramble the data. Though we all have to remember that we all live in a world in trouble from pollution already, and some of the chemicals used ARE poisonous to people.

**ALSO TO ALL OTHERS WHO WANT TO OVER-WRITE**: depending on how paranoid you are (or really do have enemies that want you that badly) overwriting a drive multiple times still leaves a magnetic signature under the data that occupied that space.

With programs and machines in the 10's - 100's of thousands of dollars, the stronger magnetic signatures can be 'filtered' out, and the data underneath can be read - it's simple but very expensive. CCleaner would not work, it just marks the address 'unoccupied' even if something is living there. And if something is living there, it can be found without any trouble, it's more for the maintenance of your computer than really "destroying" data.

Though I do wonder about PrivZer© working with 35 write-overs, though they do say that the DOD 3 pass method is good enough.

If you have someone who you think has the special machines and programs AND TRAINING to read very faint magnetic signatures, I think you have FAR more serious problems to worry about than someone finding an 'erased' disk and reading what's on it.

I use Mafia Disk Doctor© on all mag. disk drives, Cals .308, .223, .270 or .30-06 or the perennial favorite .22LR all work just about as well as any gauge shotgun. But have not really thought a lot about flash or SSD's yet. I think John Henry and his 9 pound hammer would solve the problem as Bob pointed out. And I also agree that a lot of the chemicals used on disks are poisonous when vaporized, and our planet's atmosphere is not the best place to store your deleted data. That's NOT what they mean when they talk about "The Cloud".

Hello Bob :-)
Great article.
I use DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) to wipe any drive I feel a need to, especially if I am going to do a fresh install of Windows.
The program writes zeros to all sectors to "erase" the drive and essentially makes all other data unreadable.
I would like your thoughts on this.

Why not put your drive in a re-sealable bag and fill it with water for a couple of days.

How is this for a (tongue in cheek) solution? Hire a programmer to record a lot of p**no pictures on the drive to fill it up and then require the unwary user to enter his name on the drive to decrypt it so that the p**n is visible. His name is now on the hard drive. He feazrs that his boss will find out and to protect himself, he will apply the hammer treatment for you.

Can you tell me whether or not a high powered electrical magnet will do a clean wipe of internal hard drives SD Cards And external hard drives.