Just wrote zeros to both my hard drives...

U

USMC2Hard4U

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 4, 2003
Messages
6,157
Well I was having problems all around... Random lock ups, reboots etc etc... programs freezing, files disseapering... etc...

so... I ran adaware, spy bot, found nothing out of the usuall.... ran virus scan... nothing... whatever, formatted... reinsalled XP... same shit.... i was pissed..

My temps are good, my voltages are good, I reseated everyting, pretty much built the Computer over again....

and I wrote zeros to the Hard Drives.... and bam... everything is fixed and perfect....

;)
 
Your hard drive is a a few discs that have the ability of holding a switch (1 or 0) It is magnetic. Different from memory in that it can hold this info without power. To write zeroes means to make every switch on your hardrive be set at zero. THe only true "fresh" start and all data goes bye bye. You can not recover your information after writing zeroes if it is a good program.

That is a simple explanation.
 
Zeroing out the drive means to write zeros to the drive, this will effectively remove latent data. If you do a format instead, the data could be recovered. You would need to partition and format after zeroing the drive.
 
Originally posted by Flipside
I think it's whats called a "low level format".
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Low level formatting is physically laying out the tracks and sectors on the drive, and then writting all that information on where xx sector is on the disk to itself and is only done at the factory nowadays. What he did is just a zero fill.
 
Originally posted by tdg
Low level formatting is physically laying out the tracks and sectors on the drive, and then writting all that information on where xx sector is on the disk to itself and is only done at the factory nowadays. What he did is just a zero fill.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info buddy....Always learning some new at [H].
 
always zero before you get rid of a computer :D

you dont want bad men coming after you.....:eek:
 
Originally posted by lessthanjakejohn
You can not recover your information after writing zeroes if it is a good program.
Click to expand...

Actually...technically you can, especailly if you've only done it once. To get a TRUE secure erase, you have to set the program to write 0's and 1's in different cycles up to 7+ times. ALTHOUGH, after the first few times, your probably going to need NASA to help you recover the data. If you have an endless checking account, you can actually pull layers of information off of a drive no matter how many times you do this, although each time you'll become less successful at the amounts of data your able to retrieve. Just FYI ;) It's definately not practical to ever try to recover info after a low level format at least.
 
Wow, see I didnt know about this, all this time I thought after a re-install of Windows all my data was gone.. now I know I could have recovered all this data, im going to zero fill my hard drive next time i re-install windows.
 
Yeah, or you could just continue using your computer and after a while your data will get overwritten...

If your HD has such sensitive information that you didnt want anyone to know about, like from the FBI, you mind as well physically erase the drive by smashing it to peices.
 
Originally posted by MooCow
Yeah, or you could just continue using your computer and after a while your data will get overwritten...

If your HD has such sensitive information that you didnt want anyone to know about, like from the FBI, you mind as well physically erase the drive by smashing it to peices.
Click to expand...

there's a reason the goverment owns hard drive shredding machines
 
Originally posted by velocitypimp
there's a reason the goverment owns hard drive shredding machines
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I saw in a documentary one time on security, that the british government erases the HD, runs it through a magnetic machine, shreads it, incernates it, then they put the ashes of the harddrive in hidden vaults on military bases gaurded 24/7 by armed gaurds.


...now tell me they arn't trying to hide something? ;)


anyways, this is the reason i refuse to sell Harddrives, never know who's gonna get it and try to get all my info, CC#, and whatever else off of it. i zero them out, and throw them in a closet to collect dust.... (for old HDs anyways), anything with a significant amount of space goes into a file server, but remains 100% under my possesion. :p
 
Originally posted by plot
I saw in a documentary one time on security, that the british government erases the HD, runs it through a magnetic machine, shreads it, incernates it, then they put the ashes of the harddrive in hidden vaults on military bases gaurded 24/7 by armed gaurds.


...now tell me they arn't trying to hide something? ;)


anyways, this is the reason i refuse to sell Harddrives, never know who's gonna get it and try to get all my info, CC#, and whatever else off of it. i zero them out, and throw them in a closet to collect dust.... (for old HDs anyways), anything with a significant amount of space goes into a file server, but remains 100% under my possesion. :p
Click to expand...

ok what the fuck... you need to guard the ashes? please show me someone that can reconstruct the ashes into a harddrive then recover the data.

Theres security then stupidity.
 
Actually you'd be surprise on what can still be extracted after multiple 0 and 1 fills and physical destruction. There was a case a while back with a guy who commited some serious "cybercrime" he had done a gov't level data destruction, and physically cut the platters up into small peices of his hard drive. The FBI was able to take the pieces of the platters and still extract enough old data to convict him. It consisted of many, many data recovery experts with special tools to manually extract whatever residual magnetism left on the platters that was evidence of his crime. It took them months to complete, and the price tag hovered into the millions of dollars, but it was done.
 
I did the same autoclave procedure to my IBM hard disk (the disk has almost 3 years and i format/restore every 3 months aprox), i was getting data corruption, programs crashing, all kind of weird errors, memtest reported no ram errors, and cpu passed all prime tests and burncpu with no problems, also system temperatures were ok, restoring my ghost backup fixed the problems by a day or two but and the end everything crashed, clean install was useless too :(

After the autoclave wiping, redid partitions, reinstalled windows as usual and everything is running withou a single problem, its a nice feeling having a 100% stable computer now ;)

Just wanted to share...

OldMX
 
Or you can thermite the damn things. My chem teacher did a demonstration today with the stuff. She asked the class, "this is rust mixed with powdered aluminum" and I yell out..."Oooo thermite!" and she asked me if I was a terrorist :eek: :confused:
I sorta freaked out cuz I am a brownie:D[with nothing to hide] Just felt like sharing.
 
Originally posted by tdg
Actually you'd be surprise on what can still be extracted after multiple 0 and 1 fills and physical destruction. There was a case a while back with a guy who commited some serious "cybercrime" he had done a gov't level data destruction, and physically cut the platters up into small peices of his hard drive. The FBI was able to take the pieces of the platters and still extract enough old data to convict him. It consisted of many, many data recovery experts with special tools to manually extract whatever residual magnetism left on the platters that was evidence of his crime. It took them months to complete, and the price tag hovered into the millions of dollars, but it was done.
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While I find that hard to believe.. not that i dont belive you just cant get my head around how that would be done... But that was`small pieces correct? Ashes are like dust... Impossible...
 
Incinerators for top secret usage are guarded largely to make sure they aren't tampered with. Just consider the idea of some spy type modifying one of those incinerators, tricky but definately possible. As for recovering data from an incinerated hard drive, it's not feasible. It's more likely a technology would be able to read data right out of someone's mind than from a magnetic disk that had it's platters melted and the remains burnt to ash. Not that I think I'm likely to ever see either happen. :eek:
 
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