Data Overwriting Not Working?

Hey guys, I'm trying to wipe my HDD to remove any sensitive information by doing a 3 pass overwrite, but it doesn't seem to be working?

I let the wiping program run and it took about 14-16 hours for a 1TB drive, but when I rebooted and ran easus data recovery to check and make sure nothing was recoverable, it found hundreds of thousands of RAW files (documents, images, videos, etc., various files).

I thought doing a 3 pass overwrite was supposed to completely remove any traces of past data that was written to the HDD? I ran the free space wiper after a fresh install too, so 99.9% of the space was free.

Am I doing something wrong?

Should I be making a boot-loader of a data overwriting program instead and not running one from my OS?

Golden said:

Hi,

Whichn program are you using to wipe the HDD?

Regards,
Golden

CyberScrub Privacy Suite and I've tried Eraser.

Eraser shows A LOT of errors when I run it, saying it cannot erase this and that because it's a system file, or a files locked.

Can you recommend any usb bootable data overwriting programs that I could use? I think that may be the problem.

aem said:

Diskpart is one way. Basically a format way.

Note: You might not need to do

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE

?

Not exactly sure what these instructions are for, is this how to make a bootable usb stick? I need to overwrite all previous data multiple times (just to make sure )

I don't think diskpart does that.

aem said:

It's part of making a bootable USB yes but that section there is to wipe and format the stick.

Just give it a go and then see if you can find another on the stick afterwards

Thanks, it's formatting to NTFS now. How do I make a bootloader from an ISO now? I'm sorta lost.

arkhi said:

Honestly, I would use SDelete

It's safe, simple, and effective. (Complies with Department of Defense standard 5220.22-M)

Cheers!

EDIT: Examples:

To securely delete a file/s or directory/ies with 3 passes

Code:

sdelete -p 3 -a filename/path

To safely delete already deleted data (i.e. make them unrecoverable) with 3 passes

Code:

sdelete -c -p 3

Thanks but I need a way to run that from a bootloader, which is my problem - a lot of data isn't being overwritten because I'm using the program's while my OS is loaded.