However, a recent article I read said that in a particular data recovery lab (where labs, researchers, time, and money are not an object) were able to recover a small portion of data from a piece of a smashed drive platter the size of a pea. Just Google for a 'drive eraser' or 'drive wiper') then destroy it with a hammer. Yes, SSD's and even USB flash drives can be wiped.Īnyway, I hope that helps answer what you were asking about.ĮDIT: If you intend to discard an old drive on which bank, credit card, taxes, or any other data you wouldn't want someone to dig out of the trash and run a data recovery program on, it's best to do a whole drive wipe (note that the programs that will wipe an entire drive are sometimes different than the ones used to wipe files. Plus that many passes can be extremely time consuming depending on what you're wiping. Is there a 'file shredder' for Windows 10 Occasionally I have a file containing sensitive or confidential data that want to delete. Note that the Department of Defense says 3 passes is enough to wipe sensitive goverment data. So as you can see, the 35 passes you mentioned are way, way, way overkill for a home user just wanting to make a file or files unrecoverable. It consists of 3 passes of 0's, 1's, then random data then verifies that all 3 passes were indeed written. However, what the name of the scheme is doesn't matter much, they basically determine the number of passes and what the passes consist of as they're overwriting the file or files you want gone.īy what they 'consist of' I mean that they overwrite with 0's, 1's, or random data.ġ) The 'Peter Gutmann' method (aka just 'Gutmann') consists of 35 passes with random data.Ģ) The VSITR wipe pattern method consists of 7 passes with alternating 0's and 1's then randoms characters for the last pass.ģ) The DoD 5220.22-M Wipe Method was developed by the US Government and the Department of Defense. Each scheme was put together by individuals, companies, governments, etc.
If you've read up much since you posted here, you know by now that there are data destruction "schemes". In addition, this high-speed shredder tool can erase multiple partitions or disks at the same time. It permanently erases files, partitions, or an entire disk. Developed by Sunyouth, this file shredding tool comes with many useful data removal solutions that allow you to wipe the free storage space of the hard drive by permanently erasing the already deleted files/folders. EaseUS BitWiper Best for beginners Removing sensitive data securely from Windows hard disk becomes easy with EaseUS BitWiper. It is also easy to use, making it suitable for both beginners and advanced users. Here’s another highly-rated file eraser software for Mac to try in 2024. It comes with multiple data wiping methods, including the Department of Defense 5220.22-M standard, making it a powerful tool for protecting sensitive data.
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