Data wipe in multiple Desktop machines

synergyhk27 · 09 May 2016

Hi There
I need to help a company wipe 18 HP branded Desktops and most of them are with 500GB SATA HDD of 3.5inch.

What is the best way of doing this as the company need me to make sure the Data is securely wiped and need something like a Low level format like copying zeroes.

Also I need to provide them with a report that the Data was securely wiped.

I need to do this in around 5 hours and this also need to be taken in to consideration.

thanks
Lakshan.

Barman58 · 09 May 2016

Depends on how sensitive and likely to be searched for by a future user the data is .

Something like Partition wizard bootable disk/USB could completely wipe at partition level which may be sufficient for secure wipes

Another alternative is 2015: How to securely erase hard drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) | ZDNet

The only true secure wipe is complete physical destruction of the drives

synergyhk27 · 11 May 2016

thanks Nigel

alphaniner · 11 May 2016

It used to be widely believed that multiple overwrites with random data were required to securely wipe a HDD. This has been largely debunked. Unless your adversary has access to a scanning electron microscope, a single pass with zeros is considered sufficient. SSDs are a different story due to wear leveling.

I generally wipe drives using Linux command line utility 'dd'. Seagate and WD have bootable utilities which have a wipe function, but only work with their own drives. I'm sure there are 'generic' bootable utilities out there, you just need to look.