Destructive Windows Script

[Paul Rubin]

rbt <rbt at athop1.ath.vt.edu> writes:
> Thanks for the opinion... I don't do malware. Just interested in
> speeding up file wiping (if possible) for old computers that will be
> auctioned. The boot programs that you allude to (killdisk, autoclave)
> work well, but are slow and tedious.

Yes, you have to overwrite all the bytes on the disk, which can be slow.

If the drive has ultra-sensitive data on it though, you should not
auction it no matter what wiping software you've used.  Think of bad
sector forwarding that might have happened while the drive was in
service.  The drive firmware might have copied some sector that had
recoverable errors to a new sector sometime in the past, and
transparently mapped the new sector to the old location, so that
normal I/O operations will never find the old sector to erase it.  But
suitable forensic methods might still be able to get it back.

The only way to be 100% sure the data is gone from a drive, is
basically to melt the drive.  However, if your data is that sensitive,
you shouldn't ever write it to a hard drive in the clear anyway.