data wiping

[Und3ertak3r]

In your step where you copied and deleted drive filling DVD images, then defraged..then Eraser..
Could I comment.. running eraser, then defragmenting the drive first in a remote situation (aka from BartPE or with the HDD in another PC), then a couple of times in normal mode. Then run eraser again.
With encryption of the data before doing any of the above.. I question this.. as the process of encrypting will invarably rewrite the data to differen sectors, potentially leaving the original data (while deleted) in the original sectors un-encrypted.. unless the encrypting app encrypts sector to sector..not file to file as many do.

[nihil]

Hi Phish~ ,

I agree, I wouldn't bother to encrypt applications, only data. After all they can go and buy the application in a shop (unless you are a developer)?

Some (crude) overwriting software will use 35 passes for Gutmann as normal, and more sophisticated ones will do it if they don't know the drive type. It is a sort of "failsafe" value; my point was that the degrees of cover are actually lower.

Thinking on it, I have one somewhere that allows user selection up to 99 passes, and also does 4048 bit encryption Talk about "overkill"?

Not that I actually have data thats worth being recovered in the manner you speak of.

In our dreams old chap, in our dreams.............

[phishphreek]

With encryption of the data before doing any of the above.. I question this.. as the process of encrypting will invarably rewrite the data to differen sectors, potentially leaving the original data (while deleted) in the original sectors un-encrypted.. unless the encrypting app encrypts sector to sector..not file to file as many do.

Well, in my case, I didn't do any encrypting. Nihil was suggesting it as more of a "what if"?

I suppose if one was using EFS and the data was already encrypted, then it wouldn't have to be rewritten? Or, if using a program like truerypt, again, the data is written to an already encrypted file.

Good point though. I didn't even think of that.

[Network Enforce]

How about ghosting your current drive to an image and then running dban, then re-imaging with your ghost image. That way at least you know that your harddrive has been wiped several times before re-imaging your computer. Of course you still have that data that is on your image. But at least your free space is clean.

[Ghost_25inf]

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/CIS/Doc/datarmv.html
there is a list here on tools that do the job to DOD specifications.