Low level format

[nihil]

Hmmm,

"Old Technology" ?

Cipher: September 2003
Dban: April 2007
Eraser: January 2008

"When it comes to being able to wipe the drive, you can... Technically the page file can't be shut off completely, but that's a technicality and really has nothing to do with wiping hard drives, since RAM is used as the page file..."

Do you seriously believe that?

With NT 4.0SP6a and Windows 2000SP4 you get a warning that Windows is creating a temporary pagefile. 12Mb in the case of NT and 20Mb in the case of 2000. XP reports none, but Vista defaults to 8Mb. Either Windows is going two steps forwards and one step back, or it is just a quirk in the reporting?

Obviously those amounts are totally inadequate to run Windows and Windows applications so it must use RAM in the majority of cases. I have yet to see any definitive evidence that it only uses RAM. If it can be proven that it only uses RAM, then all would be well and good, but without that proof I prefer to use methods that are demonstrably compliant.

The question would arise as to where Windows would create those temporary files. Suppose a worst case scenario and it creates them in the old page file area. OK I will assume that it overwrites all the area so that would allow for a pretty secure situation.

A possible work around might be to have the page file in a separate partition or drive. I haven't tried it, but when Windows defaults to something it generally does it in C:\

This is similar to the problem of setting Windows to clear the page file on shutdown. It will backfill with zeros apart from the bits that are still in use on shutdown. However it is a single overwrite, so neither would comply with DoD 5220-22-M requirements.

As for the actual wiping:

1. Wiping an entire drive is trivial. You just boot from external media. This includes another computer, and run your wiping application of choice.
2. Wiping files and folders is equally trivial. You can do that with any suitable utility from within the operating system.
3. As I see things, the only area of doubt is the page file. The method that is guaranteed is to boot from external media and run the wiping application from there.

Also, let's not forget laptops. When wiping the whole drive it is generally far easier to insert a CD than it is to remove the drive.

"That's crap. It's a Windows app. Enough said."

Nobody said that. The concern was that it runs from within the operating system. As it is a Windows application, that is Windows. Remember that Linux and other operating systems also use virtual memory, and I would expect the same reservations would apply to them.

Incidentally, it is not recommended to run Windows without a page file. At the very least you should use the "minimum allowed". OK, that is a bit of a misnomer as it is the amount required for a kernel dump.