Solved Inquiry on dban (dariks boot and nuke)

Helmuuth · Jun 20, 2025

Recently i prepped an old pc to give to charity. And for safety sake i ran dban auto nuke to completely wipe everything. Of course i still have original w10 installation disk. I just want to make sure this program is the best one to make personal data unretreivable. Because reset this computer doesnt nessesarily wipe everything off.

Ghot · Jun 20, 2025

Helmuuth said:
Recently i prepped an old pc to give to charity. And for safety sake i ran dban auto nuke to completely wipe everything. Of course i still have original w10 installation disk. I just want to make sure this program is the best one to make personal data unretreivable. Because reset this computer doesnt nessesarily wipe everything off.

If you ran Dban... it should be wiped for everything except really serious (and very expensive), forensic data retrieval.

Helmuuth · Jun 20, 2025

I did alot of banking transactions so thats why i resorted to dban. I heard its the best one on the market despite it took almost 8 long hours to process!
According to online sources anyone like myself can use forensic data retreival service or any other similiar software which sounds ominous.

Ghot · Jun 20, 2025

Helmuuth said:
According to online sources anyone like myself can use forensic data retreival service

That costs a fortune. Almost to the point that unless you are a Wall Street tycoon or something... you shouldn't have to worry.
You can also just change your banking passwords... etc., before you "give to charity".

Or this if your really paranoid...

Helmuuth · Jun 20, 2025

Perplexed on "baking password"

definition: "Baking in" security: This phrase means integrating security measures and considerations from the very beginning of a system, product, or process design, rather than adding them as an afterthought (which is often called "bolting on" security). When security is "baked in," it's a fundamental part of the architecture and development.

Thats new to me

I guess iam being paranoid here, but one can never be "too" careful.

Ghot · Jun 20, 2025

Helmuuth said:
I guess iam being paranoid here

Or this if your really paranoid...

Helmuuth · Jun 20, 2025

I need one

hdmi · Jun 21, 2025

For HDDs, yes, DBAN is still very highly recommended IMO.

For SSDs, not so much. If you want to make all data stored on a SSD unrecoverable, you should:

Use the software tool that is these days almost always provided for free by the manufacturer of the SSD to Secure Esase or Sanitize the drive (and verify that your exact model of SSD is supported by the tool).

Alternatively for SSDs, if it turns out that no such tool can be found on the official website of the manufacturer for the SSD you have (usually this only happens if the SSD is very old) or if you have problems getting the tool to work correctly (or it is cumbersome),

Use something like this instead:

GitHub - PartialVolume/shredos.x86_64: Shredos Disk Eraser 64 bit for all Intel 64 bit processors as well as processors from AMD and other vendors which make compatible 64 bit chips. ShredOS - Secure disk erasure/wipe

Shredos Disk Eraser 64 bit for all Intel 64 bit processors as well as processors from AMD and other vendors which make compatible 64 bit chips. ShredOS - Secure disk erasure/wipe - PartialVolume/sh...

github.com

FreeBooter · Jun 21, 2025

Discover the crucial techniques for securely erasing your SSD or HDD in this detailed video. If you're selling your PC or storage drive, you need to wipe it.

hdmi · Jun 21, 2025

FreeBooter said:
Discover the crucial techniques for securely erasing your SSD or HDD in this detailed video. If you're selling your PC or storage drive, you need to wipe it.

At 6:44, please change "Your drive will now be securely wiped" to "Your drive will now be insecurely wiped, contrary to popular belief".

spapakons · Jun 21, 2025

What if you just fill it with zeros? I had an old utility, don't remember it's name, that fills every single sector of the disk with zeros. It took some hours, but then you could not recover any data since simply there was nothing left to recover. The disk was clean like just came from the factory.

hdmi · Jun 21, 2025

spapakons said:
What if you just fill it with zeros? I had an old utility, don't remember it's name, that fills every single sector of the disk with zeros. It took some hours, but then you could not recover any data since simply there was nothing left to recover. The disk was clean like just came from the factory.

On a HDD, yes you can. It's this, but I should note that, if your goal is to wipe all the data from the entire HDD, you want to remove all partitions from it and create a single new partition on it first. This new partition's size must be the maximum size allowed on the HDD. If you skip these important steps, then you have no real guarantee that no sensitive data can be recovered (or partially) from the gaps that exist between partitions due to how the partitions are aligned.

E.g., the names of folders/files can contain sensitive information, and are stored in the MFT and the copy of the MFT that exists at the end of a NTFS partition so, names can be retrieved from leftovers that could potentially remain in these gaps after partitions are resized or worse, files that are smaller than a certain threshold are stored entirely within the MFT on NTFS.

If, however, you already have only a single partition on the HDD and this partition's size already matches the maximum size allowed on the HDD, then you don't need to repartition the HDD before you use the cipher tool to zap all your secrets from your HDD, BUT... you should also be aware that it doesn't work on SSDs and ways to prevent data leaking from one drive onto another are not as straightforward as many think. On Windows, typically it will proliferate, and not seldom will proliferate where you least expected it to proliferate.

spapakons · Jun 21, 2025

You might be right, but I thought a zero fill will also fill the gaps between partitions. Running any recovery utility on it after zeroing will find absolutely nothing, like you try to recover data from a brand new sealed disk.

hdmi · Jun 21, 2025

spapakons said:
You might be right, but I thought a zero fill will also fill the gaps between partitions. Running any recovery utility on it after zeroing will find absolutely nothing, like you try to recover data from a brand new sealed disk.

Retrieving data from the gap between two partitions after they were zero'd with cipher is a walk in the park if you use the type of disk utilities that allow you to access any sector on the entire disk, but if you never repartitioned the drive nor resized the partitions, normally these gaps will still be empty. When you resize two adjacent partitions with something like MiniTool Partition Wizard you can essentially slide the gap forward or backward, but this doesn't wipe the sectors that end up in the gap after it relocated the gap.

FreeBooter · Jun 21, 2025

hdmi said:
At 6:44, please change "Your drive will now be securely wiped" to "Your drive will now be insecurely wiped, contrary to popular belief".

Anything for you all known.

SlicEnDicE · Jun 21, 2025

Adding or removing partitions has nothing to do with wiping a HDD. A sector by sector 3-5x or more wipe with completely random data will wipe EVERYTHING on the HDD, including any possible MFT. Not even the most advanced chemistry tools can recover that.

spapakons · Jun 21, 2025

I think you worry too much. Just reinstall Windows and give it to them. If you overwrite parts of the disk, even IF they could find something it would be useless as it would be corrupt by the new data. Especially if you have wiped or zeroed the disk first. And I don't think the average person has the tools or the knowledge to recover any data anyway. In worst case, buy a small cheap HDD and install Windows there and destroy the original disk.

FreeBooter · Jun 21, 2025

It's not possible to recover data from TRIM enabled SSDs. This is because when an SSD erases data with the TRIM feature enabled, the data being deleted is immediately overwritten permanently. This makes it impossible to recover the data, as it no longer exists.

On modern version of Windows operating system, TRIM is usually enabled by default.

By making sure everything gone, you can write zeros to disk with Diskpart command.

glasskuter · Jun 21, 2025

If I was this concerned, I'd remove the hard drive and take a sledge hammer to it, run over it with my car. or my favorite, let my husband use it for target practice.

SlicEnDicE · Jun 21, 2025

glasskuter said:
If I was this concerned, I'd remove the hard drive and take a sledge hammer to it, run over it with my car. or my favorite, let my husband use it for target practice.

Yeah, I'd stick it in a furnace and recover all the metals from it to create something new. That's the only 100% sure way to get the data destroyed.

Unless the data is worth millions, a couple of secure sector by sector wipe passes will do the trick.

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