Wiping hd so its secure...

[heliocentric]

hi, im selling on the old 500gb hard drive in my macbook in order to get a 1tb. Whats the safest way to wipe it so the information on it is no retrievable?

I assume zeroing out the data with disk utility? would one pass , 7 pass or 35 be best?

Thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

35-pass is the best but it takes ages to complete. In most cases, 0-pass is more than fine but if you got time, you could use 7-pass, it's a good option in the middle.

 

[heliocentric]

i was gonna go with 7 pass...is 35 really worth it?

 

[Hellhammer]

i was gonna go with 7 pass...is 35 really worth it?

IMO not unless you have something super secret in there. In theory, 0-pass already overwrites everything

 

[heliocentric]

IMO not unless you have something super secret in there. In theory, 0-pass already overwrites everything

nothing state secret like haha

just banking information, phone numbers, address...that kinda thing

 

[Mutinygraphiks]

hi, im selling on the old 500gb hard drive in my macbook in order to get a 1tb. Whats the safest way to wipe it so the information on it is no retrievable?

I assume zeroing out the data with disk utility? would one pass , 7 pass or 35 be best?

Thanks

7 or 35 passes will wipe it un-retrievable.

 

[heliocentric]

7 or 35 passes will wipe it un-retrievable.

Really?

I read once that data was retrievable no matter what you did...

 

[Hellhammer]

Really?

I read once that data was retrievable no matter what you did...

0-pass writes zeros to the disk once. 7-pass does it 7 times and 35-pass does it 35 times. That means all your data (which is just numbers and alphabets in the HD) will be overwritten with 0 which causes the old data to be unrecoverable.

 

[GGJstudios]

I read once that data was retrievable no matter what you did...

That's not true. Don't believe everything you read. Even after 1 pass, the data is irretrievable. 7 passes is overkill. 35 is useless overkill.

 

[Mutinygraphiks]

Really?

I read once that data was retrievable no matter what you did...

someone who buys it won't be able to recover anything from your disk, once wiped nothing will be on it.

 

[heliocentric]

Ok, i shall do a 7 pass !

Thanks for putting my mind at ease

 

[Quad5Ny]

Don't waste your time on a 7-pass wipe, just do a zero pass.

Ask any data recovery company if they can recover data on a 'Zeroed' drive, the answer for 99% of them will be no.

Even if you were a pedo or some crap and the policed grabbed your drive they wouldn't be able to recover anything using standard techniques (normally they just do a 1-1 clone of your drive, because if they tampered with it, it wouldn't be viable evidence anymore).

Maybe, if you were a spy they would take the time to put the platters on a spin stand and recover the data.


(You could also download secure erase which uses your hard drives internal wiping routine to erase the drive. Its much quicker than going through the SATA bus.)