Storage forum: Best method to clean out hard drives of data/viruses for reuse?

Hi Graham,
good advice so far. What I would do is download the live CD version of Partition Wizard ISO and burnit to a CD, then boot from the CD. Use Partition- Modify-Hide Partition to hide all the disk(s) you don't want to reformat. This isn't strictly necessary but it will prevent any possibility of infection from the disks you are reclaiming.

Then for each disk you want to reclaim, Use Partition Wizard Partition-Delete and select the "Secure Erase" option. for all partitions on the disk. This will delete the partition(s) and overwrite with binary zeros. Your disk is now clean and empty.

Use Partition Wozard to allocate whatever partition(s) you want to define on the disk, You might even want to rebuild the MBR (master Boot Record) to make sure that is clean too.

When you've done this for all disks, unhide the partitions you originally hid and reboot the machine into Windows. Format (Full Format) all of the new partitions you created above and you are done.

This will take some time but you can guarantee there is no malware on any of the diisks.

Good Lick!

Use your Windows OS install disk to delete all existing partitions, create as many paritions as you want (one partition using all the available space would be fine) and format. Don't complete the OS installation, since you only need storage.

Glenlo

At first glance judging from the title of your response it appeared that it may have had merit. WRONG!!

Everyone in this community has the right to ask a legitimate question without being subjected to ridicule or vicious insensitive comments for having asked. Sarcastic, pseudo-intellectuals like you who can' t seem to see pass their own nose are the individuals who need reprimanding and correction.

It appears to me that your head may be composed of "water vapor" (more on that later) and obviously stuck in a "Cloud" of ignorance, stupidity and a lack of consideration for others!

Now as far as the composition of a cloud here are couple of links that may enlighten you because judging from your sarcastic comment you may actually believe that the composition of a cloud is entirely of "water vapor":

http://www.vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09/UnderGrad%20Papers/Ojo%20-%20Paper.pdf

http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_is_water_vapor.htm

I suggest you read glenlo's post again. It wasn't a question IMO but a very sarcastic commentary on Graham's post. I stand by my original reply to glenlo. It appears as of this writing that other astute members agree (12). However, I realize there will always be those who disagree (3) as do you.

Open discourse is what this forum is about and sometimes requires one to read between the lines in order to fully grasp the true meaning of what is actually being communicated. IF, I interpreted glenlo's remarks incorrectly...then my apologies. I hope you continue to participate in this forum and I look forward to reading your comments/suggestions to Graham's and future questions posted in this forum.

Together Everyone Achieves More

Consider this: We lack perfection, systems fail UPS's run out of juice, generators run out of fuel.The cloud is no more secure than any properly designed self storage.

They are IDE drives not sata,my new machine is SATA and I didn't want to deal with it.. I guess I've had good luck with the electronics of my machines, on the other hand most of my problems have been anti - mal-ware that didn't work as advertised. One of the above drives was infested with mal-ware and my anti- virus soft ware didn't warn me. At the time it seemed the easiest way to transfer the data form the other machine...Bad idea.

The best thing to do to clean old hard drives is to remove it from computer , connect to different computer via usb or as internal slave and format it twice any data will be cleaned off it.

There are virus that can exist after a format, these reside in the MBR or the "drive FAT" that helps eliminate bad drive areas" part of the manufacturing process. These are real sneaky or profound threats, so don't discount their presence, while formatting can work for typical re-use, I find using a "disk wiper" better suited. The wiper doesn't format per se, but does clean any old data and setting or OS FAT tables, once done you use the OS setup which will format as usual and prepare the HD.

I had great success with DBAN and KILLDISK, both free versions, run once and then later reformat HD for use. Also, take a grain of advise don't use too old of HDs, they still crash even in ext. USB cases. A good 16gb flash drive is better for typical use rather than dragging an 40gb around even if more space, but you can use it all once practiced.

tada ------Willy

I have always used Micro2000's Eraser Disk. Extract from their website reads:-
"Protect the security and privacy of your confidential data. Sterilize old hard drives with EraserDisk, a utility for decommissioning drives correctly followed by low-level formatting the disk . These actions exceed the US Government's security requirements of D0D 5520.22-M, the most prevalent standard for cleaning a hard drive. Wipe the hard drive clean with up to seven disk erase passes that over-write with varied data, including a low-level format for complete sterilization, and use the test utility to make sure you've really wiped that drive clean."
It costs around $40 but is well worth it. I have also used the disk to low level format new drives.
Mike.M

Hi you can download this program for free, I cant remember the name of the site it could have been on Cnet. This program called Revo Uninstaller it has a program called " Unrecoverable Delete " just click on Tools in Revo and scroll down to the bottom of the page it will be on the left side. Good Luck!

Reformatting is enough in some cases. However there are viruses that survive formatting, most recently the FBI virus and in the past, msblast.
So to save time and cover all my bases. I delete the partition, create a new partition and then format.
I have never had a virus survive that...so far.

Purchase Wipe Drive,it completely wipes your hard drive. Formatting and Repartitioning does not delete data.

I was reading through the answers and noticed something missing, at least from what I've used with my own practices.

In the days past, I used to first use FDISK to delete the MBR (s) from any disc I was going to reuse, whereupon I would create a new MBR and do a full format followed by check disc (scandisk now?) with full and fix arguments.

As others have noted, a full format should do the trick but in the Fat32 days (and previous) there were copies of boot records that a few tricky viruses would contaminate.

Partition magic was a program I used to also use to more easily mess with boot records and such using a GUI. It also gave some pretty obscure options to use for formatting which I would think would scramble things nicely. I believe you could disconnect any "good" drives you have in your computer, connect the drive (s) you want to wipe and boot from the CD with Partition Magic on it (or another utility of the same nature) Wipe the discs and away you go to install it into an enclosure of your choice.

Nice job of one of the other reviewers to make sure you are using a PATA or SATA that applies to the disc (s) in question however getting an enclosure that will work for you might be worth doing a little research and looking for ratings on such. I have several enclosures from way back when and remember that a couple of them worked well and a couple didn't.

They also make a handy little cable that comes with a power supply. You can plug it into a USB port and connect it to 3.5" and 2.5" PATA drives as well as SATA drives. I use that thing much more often than I use the enclosures. I also like some of the "drive caddy" sorts of options that are available if you have many drives you want to use for data or what not. You can just basically have it on your desk top and plug a drive into it, use it for what you need and remove it without having to have several external cases for each drive (if you have several)

Hope any of this is useful to you.

FR

Dear all,

My apologies for adding to the question, but I did not know hoe to proceed.


I too am keen to know the same, with one added question: Please let me know how I can use my older HDDs as external storage devices. Do I have to buy a special external connector with power supply? How does it work? I am really keen to know the technicalities.


I have a SATA 160 GB and an IDE 40 GB HDD which I would love to put to use, to store data externally.


Please do help with this question.


With thanks,

You need to write the disk to 0's in order to ensure that all the old data is gone. In particular with hard drives that contained Windows at some point in time, this is particularly important. Windows likes to add files that can't be overwritten, even with a re-formatting of the drive. It's best to download a utility from the hard drive manufacturer (Western Digital has a good one) that will write the disk to 0's. Once you do that, there is no way that any data that was previously on there could possibly survive.