Discussion Forums > Technology
Looking for hardisk format software
nstgc:
While I'm sure I could ask Google, since there is already a thread on the subject of formatting a hard drive, I figure I'd ask.
What would be a good program to "random-fill" a drive?
arknorth:
'Zeroing' a drive can, again, be done with Seagate's DiskWizard, though I tend to use Maxtor's MaxBlast (which, oddly enough, is also available from Seagate, as they now own Maxtor), that is, if you mean by 'random fill' the wiping of all data from the drive.
A-N
techguy.org
nstgc:
No, zero-filling is nothing special. If you want to wipe your data to make it hard for someone to read, you need to write random ones and zeros to a drive several times.
arknorth:
True - but if you run a zeroing program twice, it pretty much does the same thing.
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nstgc:
No it doesn't. All it does is write zeros.
When you write a bit to a magnetic medium (ie HDD) it flips the polarity of the magnetic particles. However, it doesn't flip all of them, just most. It is very easy to read this data, even after it has been written over. I had a program that could find files that had been written over (not just had their headers removed and were unindexed, but overwritten by another file). I know it works because I've used it. The FBI have far more sensivitve equipment. You could spend days writing zeros to a drive and it could still be read.
This isn't just an issue for those who may be holding illegal content on their computer (not that there are any those sorts here on a anime torrent site's message board). Its necessary for security reasons as well. In fact, once I received refurbished hard drives full of financial records of business.
If you want to get rid of data you need to write random 1's and 0's.
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