And there isn't much you can do about the data collected on online accounts (Gmail, Hotmail, Google Docs, Facebook), cell phone records at the phone company, or financial records at banks.
Of course don't forget to encrypt your hard drive, swap, portable media, and Internet connection. Call the best, most expensive data recovery companies in the world, and they will tell you they can't recover data overwritten with a single pass.ĭepending on your security needs and paranoia level, you may also want to wipe backups, portable media, slack space, fragmented files (SQLite3 databases such as Firefox URL history), RAM, swap**, cell phone, and other items. Read " Data Remanence" in Wikipedia and the references there. On modern drives, every pass after the first just wastes time-and lots of it! The Gutmann method is an urban legend: There is no evidence that two or more passes are any more secure than a single pass. I briefly looked at Secure-Delete's sfill, and I think BleachBit is similarly effective.īleachBit 0.6.5 uses a single pass secure erase method.
If you upgrade to the Pro version, there will be more useful features available, like OS migration, partition recovery, and bootable disk creation.I'm not familiar with Eraser for Windows, but if Eraser uses more than one pass, BleachBit is more "efficient" (I think you mean to ask "effective"). Convert the disk/partition between primary and logical, MBR and GPT, or from FAT to NTFS.Create/format/delete partitions to prepare the space of reuse.Resize partitions to allocate your disk space according to your needs.
With the free software installed, you can: Thus, if you have a large-size disk to wipe, wait patiently for the process to complete.ĮaseUS Partition Master is powerful software that will fulfill many of your disk-related needs. Generally, it's longer than simply delete files due to the additional overwriting process. The time it will take to wipe out an SSD or HDD varies, depending on the capacity of your SSD or HDD. Click "Execute the operation" and then click "Apply".(You can set to 10 at most.) Then Click "OK". Click the "Execute Operation" button in the top-right corner, check the changes, then click "Apply".In the new window, set the time for which you want to wipe your partition, then click "OK".Right-click the partition you want to erase data from, and choose "Wipe Data".We've set two options for you to wipe data. To secure erase an SSD or HDD with the free SSD erasing tool: Once it's done, the data stored will be lost forever. To back up a whole disk effectively, you can use the free backup software to do it for you. How to Secure Erase SSD or HDDĭo make sure you have backed up all the needed files on the hard drive you are going to erase. No matter what the process is, the outcome is the same: your SSD or HDD will be securely wiped out. The only difference is that the free tool erases your data permanently by writing random numbers, not binary one or zero. The "Wipe Data" feature works almost identical to the Secure Erase commands. The free partition manager - EaseUS Partition Master, can also serve the function of an SSD erasing tool to securely erase an SSD or HDD for you. Therefore, you will need a hard drive erasing tool to help you to secure erase your solid-state drive. Since the Secure Erase commands are only available from the hard drive firmware, you can not run the commands as you do in Command Prompt. But only with the help of an SSD erasing tool or utility. But from a different perspective, Secure Erase is a perfect way to prepare your storage device for reuse or resale. That means once you perform a Secure Erase, there will be no chance to recover data from the device. It is a term for a data sanitation method that completely overwrites all of the data on a hard drive by writing a binary one or zero to the sectors on the storage device. Secure Erase is, in essence, a set of commands that are available from the firmware on PATA/SATA based hard drives.
What is secure erase and how to do it? Read on and you will know all about it. When you attempt you prepare your storage device for a new user, you may need to secure erase the SSD or HDD to protect your private data.