What is Data Wipe & Correct way to Execute

 

What is Data Wipe & Correct way to Execute

Before you pass your computer or hard drives on to third parties or for electronic waste recycling, you should erase or physically destroy the hard drives.

"Normal" deletion does not help

In most cases under Windows, files are first moved to the so-called "recycle bin" when they are deleted - in reality this corresponds to the recycle bin under your desk. The data is only removed from this area when the recycle bin is full, i.e. the specified storage space is occupied, or when the user empties the recycle bins himself. However, only the references to the data in the index, the table of contents of the hard disk, are deleted and the area is released for overwriting. However, this overwriting may never take place. The supposedly disposed of data is still on the hard drive, but can no longer be accessed by the user using normal means.

Even fully formatting a hard drive or data carrier may not completely erase data. With normal formatting, the so-called high-level formatting, only the file system structure is newly created; so the complete table of contents was deleted and replaced by a new one. Here, too, the digital data is still on the data carrier. Formatting is therefore unsuitable as a secure deletion method.

Do Data Wiping properly

However, the statement "Data Wiping correctly" must be preceded by the fact that this only applies to data to which the overwrite program has access. Modern semiconductor-based storage media (SSD) and also hard disks (HDD) or combinations (SSHD) that work with magnetic media use very complicated mechanisms to control errors that occur. What all the methods have in common is that they prevent access to defective memory areas by application programs, which also include all overwrite programs. Hard disks also allow the creation of Protected Hard Disk Areas (HPA). With special analysis programs, however, these blocked / protected memory areas can be read out, if this is still physically possible.

Data on intact hard drives can be completely and irreversibly erased by overwriting with special software. The data is overwritten once or several times with specified characters or random numbers, which is sufficient in most cases. Windows now overwrites a partition
completely with zeros during "slow" formatting. With older hard drives (<80GB) the data should be overwritten 7 times.

Modern hard disks allow the use of the ATA- "Enhanced Security Erase" command. A manufacturer-specific routine is triggered in the hard disk, which is intended to erase the entire hard disk including defective memory areas. This deletion method is recommended for SSD or SSHD. The use of the command should be combined with the above-mentioned overwriting. The data carriers can still be used after being overwritten.

In the software market, there are both freeware and commercial products that perform the aforementioned overwrite methods. Most of these tools offer several overwriting methods.
We recommend using programs to overwrite the hard disks, which are started from a bootable medium (eg CD, USB stick) and overwrite the hard disks as a whole.

Note : We recommend that hard drives that you pass on to trustworthy third parties are overwritten in their entirety, regardless of which operating system is installed. Please note that if the entire hard disk is overwritten, the manufacturer's recovery partitions and the operating system are also overwritten.

If you are not sure how to proceed or whether an overwrite program is working properly, ask a knowledgeable person for help.

Physical annihilation

If you do not want to overwrite a hard disk or you are unable to do so because of a defect, you should physically damage or destroy the hard disk. This also applies to storage media such as CD / DVDs or USB sticks.

If you've always wanted to see the inside of a hard drive, this would be the right time. Do maximum damage to the object. Be careful, however, and put on appropriate protective clothing.
Even bending the panes means that the common methods of data recovery are no longer applicable. Please note that some hard drive manufacturers have used sheets of glass and CDs or DVDs can shatter very violently. With SSD hard drives or USB sticks, you have to damage the individual memory chips.