I have an external usb hard drive 500GB. It’s faulty and if I return it
to the supplier it will be replaced. I used it to store years of data,
some of it sensitive like banking data etc.
I have formatted it but I understand that doesn’t remove the underlying
files.
Is there an app in openSUSE thet removes the underlying files or wipes
the drive so they can’t be reconstructed?
There is no problem using shred on a drive that is formatted. You just
make sure you run shred for the entire drive and not for a single file.
The number of overwrite iterations you use is related to your paranoia.
100 is overkill. Some sources say that as few as one may now be
acceptable. More reading on the subject:
‘Data remanence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia’
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence)
The trouble with failing drives is that you never know how the drive
firmware will treat failed sectors. If you are extremely paranoid, you
have to physically destroy the drive because it’s always possible the
firmware will stop writing to failed sectors entirely, and your data
will be left after running an operation like shred.
I wouldn’t be that sure about that article, professional ways to recover
data from a disk involve some magnetic shadowing or something (you can
see 7 or 8 writes back) so 100 may be an overkill but 20 would be quite
sure but it will still take hell lot of time.
–
If builders built homes the same way programmers make applications then
one woodpecker would destroy whole civilization.
swerdna;1937367 Wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have an external usb hard drive 500GB. It’s faulty and if I return it
> to the supplier it will be replaced. I used it to store years of data,
> some of it sensitive like banking data etc.
>
> I have formatted it but I understand that doesn’t remove the underlying
> files.
>
> Is there an app in openSUSE thet removes the underlying files or wipes
> the drive so they can’t be reconstructed?
>
> Thanks
> Swerdna
Not being sarcastic, how much the usb drive cost vs. sensitive banking
data.
In this circumstances and if your paranoid that someone can obtain
information from this hardware better to just use the hammer. My feeling
is if the drive is faulty there is a big chance that there will be a
failure in erasing the datas stored.
– People who do not break things first will never learn to create
anything
Thanks folks. The fault is in the spin-up process, not the surface
itself, so I feel I can shred it with confidence in the result.
I have to power it on 10-15 times to get a result, and bang the case
each time. It’s going now at last. I’ve set it to shred with 25
iterations. It will run all night.
conram;1937516 Wrote:
> Not being sarcastic, how much the usb drive cost vs. sensitive banking
> data.
> In this circumstances and if your paranoid that someone can obtain
> information from this hardware better to just use the hammer. My feeling
> is if the drive is faulty there is a big chance that there will be a
> failure in erasing the datas stored.
You right if there is bank info.,personal info. use 10lb hammer and go
for,
That I did 2 years ago use a hammer that`s it;)