Safe Formatting

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PsichoDM

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
161
Guys,

what's a good program for safely formatting everything I have on my laptop so that there's no chance of that data being restored? I want to sell it on ebay and I want to avoid someone haxoring my stuff back even if I format it normally through dos.

Thanks!
 
PsichoDM said:
It's dual boot :)
Click to expand...

well saw my legs off and call me shorty ...

get a bonified hard drive wiping program ..or wipe all partitions and reinstall linux ..maybe a distro that uses different file format than what your currently using ..reiser ..ext3 ..whatever ..then take a windows98 disc and reformat drive to fat32 ... then reinstall xp (im guessing that s what your dual booting with ) in NTFS ..that should clear the drive with stuff you already have lying around or access too (..again , guessing on that front )


[F]old|[H]ard
 
I use DBAN.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

It formats your drive, but writes useless data to it three times.

Gotta warn you, depending how big/fast your drive is, it could take a couple days to run the whole thing.
 
You can specify Dban how many times to overwrite the HDD. I think the quick option only overwrites once and that is all you really need to do in this scenario.
 
I put the drive in an external enclosure, hook it to an XP or Vista box, format it, the run the following batch file (assuming drive letter is d: )

wipe.bat

cipher /w:d:
cipher /w:d:
cipher /w:d:


Each run of cipher overwrites the free space on the drive with 0's, then F's, and then with random data. Takes a while. Works well.

I have a scheduled job that runs cipher versus all of my system drives once a month to keep my free space nice and clean.
 
The magnet from an 18" or larger subwoofer always works wonders too, yanno... ;)

Or a bulk eraser. Helluva lot faster than Eraser or DBAN (Eraser uses DBAN code, actually), and is just as if not more reliable when it comes to totally wiping any possibility of data recovery.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
The magnet from an 18" or larger subwoofer always works wonders too, yanno... ;)
Click to expand...

I have a question about the magnet method... I have heard, and seen posted here, that using a magnet will actually render the drive useless. Something about servo tracks written on the drive that get erased as well as everything else... so, is that true, or just a myth?
 
If you can low level format the drive after using the magnet it might work again, but I dont know if it will so dont try it.
 
Myth, like so many other things floating around that thar Intarweb...

The magnetic fields from the sub magnet would be more than enough to erase/wipe the platters without causing any type of "damage" to the drive itself. Obviously I don't mean taking a hard drive and dropping it on the magnet itself; that would be a shock to the hardware mechanism and the electronics themselves, which would defeat the purpose.

But just waving a hard drive within maybe 10 inches or so (25cm for you Metric peeps) a few times is more than enough. I've done this myself over the years when I had access to such a sub magnet, once using a nice 21" Cerwin Vega with a blown voice coil for that specific purpose. ;)\

Before someone decides to call me out, I will agree that there is some possibility - and I mean an incredibly minute one - that the magnetic fields from the sub magnet or bulk eraser could have some effect on parts of the mechanism itself. But I personally would dismiss such a thing for two reasons:

1) Obviously this type of "wipe" by waving it near a powerful magnet or bulk eraser is not something you'd do when the drive is actually powered up and in operation - that could lead to possible physical damage: the heads could be pulled (or pushed) into contact with the platter surface(s) and then you'd be ruining the drive. The data would still be wiped because of the magnetic field, but the drive itself would be rendered useless afterwards. Since doing this with the drive off would mean the actuator, swing arm, and the heads themselves would be in the parked position, the chance for head damage is almost somewhere between null and void. ;)

2) The chances of the magnetic fields actually doing the possible damage in #1 above are a longshot indeed since most all of the components on the inside of a hard drive enclosure are made of aluminum which is a non-magnetic material to begin with. The actuator, the swing arm, the spindle, etc. All of that stuff is typically manufactured of aircraft grade aluminum that has a higher tensile strength (with the accompanying stiffness also) and machined to incredibly precise tolerances where "play" or looseness simply doesn't happen. Non-magnetic materials won't be affected by the magnetic fields - the platters themselves are either glass-based polysubstrates or a composite mixture of non-magnetic metals nowadays (brass, etc), and aren't subject to warping that theoretically occurs in the presence of a strong magnetic field.

I'm getting too complex right now so I'll shut up. :p Needless to say, using a sub magnet or bulk eraser is an option.

Low level formatting is something that should never be done once the drive leaves the factory, and the magnetic fields from subs and bulk erasers don't have anything to do with low level stuff to begin with.

All modern formatting tools for the past 15 years or so are high level formatters; the only true low level formatting tool that I've ever been able to find was one from Maxtor a friend of mine provided me with back in 1991 and I still have it just in case but, as I said, it's not something you do more than once and maybe again and only if absolutely necessary.

The trick is knowing that necessary part - I've only used that tool 3 times since I got it 16 years ago because it's simply not necessary even in times when it seems it is.

Hope this helps...
 
That is some good information, and I learned a bit there... but, what about the servo tracks that are hypothetically written on the drive.. do they even exist, because honestly.. I don't know. I have read that they do, and..of course, I have read that they don't.

So, are they real or not...and if they are, I assume the magnet method will leave them intact.. correct?
 
I've seen articles that make mention of such stuff, like this one that mentions the "servo tracks" in the last paragraph on the first page, but in my experience, I've never had issues in the few hundred times I've wiped drives off a sub magnet or bulk eraser. Of course, the hardware in use in that article has a magnetic field that even 50 bulk erasers all powered up at the same time couldn't touch - it's freakin' powerful stuff there.

I had one assignment years ago where a banking services company was upgrading their fleet of desktops from the HQ offices, about 2700 desktops. It was my job along with 2 other people to yank the drives out, wipe 'em, then restore the machines to a usable state with just a basic OS (Windows NT4, actually) for donation to some schools, churches, etc. Always looking for the tax writeoffs, I guess.

Anywho... we did the job with 2 bulk erasers. One guy yanked the drives out, the other gathered ID info for the database as required by the client (they wanted a record of each machine and each hard drive, right down to the serial numbers just in case), and mine was to wipe 'em, which I did 2 at a time, one drive in each hand wiped over bench mounted bulk erasers.

Just to be safe so I wouldn't really screw things up, I created a tiny wooden "arch" that sat about 11" above the bulk erasers and provided a platform of sorts for me to lay the drives on (I put a towel over the wood to provide a "safe" surface) and then placed the drives on the towel and did the old "Karate Kid' wax-on-wax-off motion for about 10 seconds at a time. Then placed the drives on a table behind me, grabbed two more from the stack and repeated till it was all done.

Took about 34 hours to get it done (we started on Friday afternoon at closing time around 5:15PM) and worked straight through till we finished. Piece of cake... :) We spent the next few days reinstalling the OSes on all the hardware then boxed 'em up and labeled 'em as required and packed 'em in two semis for delivery, then we collected our payment (w00t!) and took a month off.

Fun fun...
 
Better choose a drive you can afford to lose just in case like some old very small capacity drive. I've got a few 4.3GB IDE drives laying around for basic testing purposes just like this. :)
 
Ah, no worries.. I've got an old WD400 sitting right here that will do fine.. I honestly don't even know what's on it.... So, that must mean it's not important.. right:p

Thanks again, I appreciate the info.
 
Hey bbz_ghost, I have a question if your willing to answer. I know this is a bit off topic for this thread, so if you want me to start another, just let me know.

I have a older maxtor drive that gets bad sectors from time to time. I just run maxtors low level format tool on it, when it happens, and the drive will be good for a few more months. This drive is used in a computer fairly near a magnetic source. I have put up as much shielding as I could, but I can still measure a reasonable magnetic field. There is no possibility of moving the server, or the harddrive, because of how it was designed into the machine

What are the draw backs of lowlevel formatting a harddrive? Is there any other way to restore bad sectors short of lowlevel formatting?
 
Not really, no, but that's not the purpose of low level formatting. That's designed to set the platters up after the drive is assembled on the factory floor according to all the parameters contained in the firmware on the drive (LBA stuff, heads, tracks, sectors, blah blah blah). So redoing a low level format is akin to resetting it to factory condition - but this isn't something you do on a whim.

I did a quick Google search for some basic background info (I know a lot about a lot but I can't quote sources for every damned thing I know, obviously). The very first hit when searching for "low level format" is this one and I have nothing to add to what it says since I think it says it pretty damned well:

"Important drive information (servo, sector layout, and defect management, etc.) is stored in the low-level format at the factory. This information is designed to last the life of the drive and therefore it is not possible to low level the drive outside the factory. Although some drive manufactures and BIOS provided so-called "low level format utilities", they actually perform a write-read verify of the drive’s user data sectors, and do not actually perform a low-level format. In the event of a corrupted master boot record or boot block virus, use FDISK /MBR command to restore the master boot record."

Works for me. As I said earlier, I do have a Maxtor utility created way back in 1998 and I got it just after 99 rolled around. It's the only true low level formatter I've ever found - the rest are just imitators and they do high level formats (the standard stuff most people know and use).

The primary reason for the need to do a true low level format only once in the lifetime of a drive is because if something goes wrong in the middle of a true low level format process, the drive will more than likely be rendered inoperable from that point on. The swing arm, the actuator, and the heads go to places on the inner tracks of the platters that are outside the typical high level formatting tools ability to control; they're areas of the platters where no user data exists, just the information necessary to provide the info described in the paragraph quoted above, i.e. those "servo tracks" and other relevant data for the proper operation of the hard drive itself.
 
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