dban and eraser

K

kk2

New Member
hi guys i need to wipe out my hard drive, when i say wipe out i mean really i have some sensitive files that i need to get destroyed

i asked a questionsome days ago and got a very helpful answer by david

i used eraser and erased the unused space and cluster tips(although i dont really know what they are)

now i ve read some stuff here about dban, im about to format my laptop, and i was thinking to use the dban in order to wipe everything out, using the gutmann algorithm and then after installing the os, i m thinking of using again eraser

will the combination of eraser + dban(guttman) + eraser destroy the sensitive files?

thanks in advance
 
The answer to your question is yes, but it's complete overkill, because either will do the job on its own.

If what you are planning to do is restore your laptop to factory condition, the best thing is probably to leave DBAN alone. Wipe the free space on your laptop drive(s) with Eraser, after explicitly erasing any files you know to be sensitive. The default single pass wipe will be fine (you never need to use the Gutmann method on modern drives). Then use your laptop's restore procedure, which will probably require a restore disk or a program that reloads the system from a recovery partition. Finally, to be sure, Install Eraser and erase the free space on your drives again (this will catch free space previously occupied by files before you restored the system).

Cluster tips are the spare space at the end of the final chunk of space allocated to the file. In your circumstances, erasing cluster tips probably does not add much to your security; the key thing is to prevent recovery of deleted files.

David
 
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