How to ensure complete destruction of data from hard drive?
I want to ensure complete destruction of data from my hard drive, which option suits best, degaussing or a drive wiping software.
The option which suits best to ensure complete destruction of data from your hard drive is to use a drive wiping software as degaussing may make the media inoperable.
In the process of degaussing the storage media is subjected to an influential magnetic field to eliminate the data on the media. Therefore, this is suitable if the media is not required for reuse.
Whereas in case of drive wiping software, it follows certain patterns or standards to effectively remove magnetic remnants from the hard drive ensuring permanent removal of data from your hard drive.
One such utility is Remo Data Sanitizer, an advanced disk erasing tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive or logical drives by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns and various international disk sanitization standards. Drive Wipe eliminates data file(s) in different directories with a stroke of a key shredding sensitive data beyond recovery.
Because of its intuitive design and a simple user interface, Remo Data Sanitizer helps you to safely and easily erase private data from a complete hard disk and even a logical drive.
Follow the steps below to use Remo Drive Wipe to erase the data permanently from your hard drive:
Step 1: Launch the program Remo Drive Wipe either by double clicking the application icon on the desktop or from Programs list in Start menu. Application main window is as shown in Figure a.
Figure a: Application Main Window
Step 2: Select the physical disk to erase complete hard disk or logical drive that has sensitive data to be erased and click Next button. As soon as you click Next button, a Window to select sanitizing methods is displayed as shown in Figure b.
Figure b: Wiping Methods
The utility provides nine sanitizing methods and they are classified into different levels for erasing the data which are based on the security levels.
Below mentioned sanitizing methods offer “low” security levels
- Fast Zero Overwrite
- Random Overwrite
- US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M)
Below mentioned sanitizing methods offer “medium” security levels
- US Navy, NAVSO P-5239-26-RLL
- North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO standard
- German: VSITR
Below mentioned sanitizing methods offers “high” security levels
- DOD Standard 5220.28 STD
- Peter Gutmann Secure Deletion
- US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M) + Gutmann method
Step 3: Select the appropriate sanitizing method and press Next button to erase the selected drive. As you click Next button, a Window asking for confirmation before start of the erasing process would be displayed. Click OK to continue the process. The utility would erase the selected drive and would display the message intimating the same.
FYI:
Once the data is completely erased using Remo Drive Wipe, try to run Remo Undelete software to confirm that your data has been completely destroyed beyond recovery.
