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Discussion => Security => Topic started by: tbart on August 14, 2013, 06:20 pm

Title: dban and wiping drives related questions
Post by: tbart on August 14, 2013, 06:20 pm
okay, i accepted the general wisdom here that Dban was the way to go re wiping drives

wiped my computer's hard drive (an SSD drive) with Dban, 3 times with that method that's title was a german name starting with "G" iirc Guttman? (old age and CRS are a bad combo, and for the incognito, CRS = Can't Remember Shit"). It took about 9-10 hours each time, didn't clock it, but it was more than 8 hours. Then took about 8-10 hours reloading all programs manually. I've still got some concern about cached info as i restored microsoft office email files (.pst) to Office outlook 2007, and a few financial data files (quickbooks for one), and have to wonder how much is hidden in those restored backup files.

now, i like to clone my drive onto a backup drive, and clone it regularly, about every 2 weeks

not wanting to tie the computer up a second time for 2 days using dban on the backup drive, i noticed EaseUS ToDo Backup software has a drive wipe tool (and it also recommends wiping 3X) - software is Taiwan based fwiw

question 1) anyone know anything about EaseUS and it's wiping tool

question 2) after changing the entire drive to an "unallocated disk or partition), drive is an older seagate 320GB 2.5" drive (not SSD), it only shows like 298.09GB - i know a percentage is lost to whatever computerese speak - now for the question: on the first wipe, it took approx 8 hours, on the 2nd wipe, less than 4 hours, and it's now on the 3rd wipe and based on progress showing, it looks like it's going to be less than 4 hours (at 55% point, it's been 1.5 hours so far) - is this seem right. Dban seemed to take the same amount of time for the 256GB SSD drive

i'm asking cause i'd rather not tie up the computer using Dban on the backup hard drive but don't relish the idea of cached info not being written over or wiped  - the EaseUS runs on the backup drive with computer still up and running, and actually wipes in the background while i'm doing whatever. I did do a google search to see if there were any reviews or tests of it's wiping tool

tks for any input
Title: Re: dban and wiping drives related questions
Post by: sourman on August 14, 2013, 07:02 pm
First of all, never use the Guttman method or anything other than a single pass overwrite if possible. Those other methods are designed for older drives or governments destroying state secrets. If anyone can recover overwritten data today, it's the intelligence community and the technique will be secret.

SSD drives cannot be fully wiped with DBAN or similar tools due to wear leveling technology inherent to their design. If EaseUS is the drive manufacturer, then I would try their tool to see if it wipes the drive correctly. In the future, use full disk encryption software to immediately encrypt all partitions on any SSD drive, and then you shouldn't have to worry about unallocated clusters or disk wiping. Just "forget" your passphrase and/or destroy the master key and the data on the SSD is effectively useless.