Unused disk space 500 GB HDD

C

catmouse

New Member
Which method should i use, if i have a 500 GB harddrive and 2 partions on that.
Which one is best, and without to kill my harddrive or something?

And i want that the traces on my HDD should be gone.
35 pass should be really slow, maybe 7 or 1?

Then i have other harddrives that just lies and ponds.
But some of them is impossible to even run.
Is the best method to destroy them with thermite?
 
Unless someone's security service is after you (and perhaps not even then), a single pass should be sufficient for wiping free space. The time you save is better spent running a file recovery program to check that everything you want to have erased is indeed gone.

If the hard drive won't work, it cannot be erased. I have in the past dismantled a drive to the point where I could smash the platters with a club hammer and cold chisel. It's fun, but messy.

David
 
I just want to know that the data is gone. on my non functional harddrives and the functional.
If something happen me in some time, i don't want to give out my whole life to peoples.
A lot of old logs and shit on the hard-drives, not illegally but it's still logs.

I have used CCleaner with 35 pass and Eraser when erasing files from the harddrive with 35 pass.
Should i run a unused space some times to, so the logs is gone?

I use Ccleaner every week. And Eraser every day. I hope that my harddrive is not going to crash because i use it so often.
 
Every day for a free space wipe is probably too much; wiping free space does put some stress on the drive. During periods of testing, I probably run the free space wipe more often than that without (so far) any ill effects, but hard drives tend to fail very unpredictably these days. Daily file erasing is unlikely to be a particular problem.

I'd have to say again that there is no empirical evidence I know of that using the 35 pass method gives you greater security with modern drives than using, say, a 3 pass method. It is the default in Eraser for file erasing because Joel feels that is what users would expect. I have changed my default.

The best way of checking that files you want gone are indeed gone is to run a file recovery program; my preferred one is Recuva, as it has a facility for overwriting anything it files, which is a useful complement to Eraser. If Recuva can't find it (or, if the file name itself is not sensitive, can't recover it), that's probably as near safe as you need.

David
 
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