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Domain: killdisk.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to killdisk.com.
Comments · 10
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Re:How does...
How hard can it be for a government to make a CD stick which you insert in a PC which boots up and wipes the hard drive?
http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
unbelievably easy
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Re:I got records from @home from an ebay purchase
Haha, I meant DoD. US Department of Defense 5220.22 M compliant if you were interested.
I usually use http://www.killdisk.com/ -
Re:Easy...Yes. Go buy yourself a harddrive enclosure that has a USB interface. I was thinking the same thing, but I see a bit of a problem with this. My experience has been that USB enclosers tend to run about $40 a piece. Some harddrives seem to be flaky with them, with the effect that I actually had a 200gig harddrive that was perfectly fine in my system actually fail right after I put it into the usb harddrive encloser (seemed that the drive, as it was one of the EARLY 200 gig drives, had to have a special driver installed for windows to use it properly, and when I plugged it in and it registered as a usb removable device.... Nasty). Even over USB2, the transfer rates of these USB harddrives seem WAY slower than an internal drive or a regular usb external HD (not sure why on that one), and seem to bluescreen windows if you try to access the drive while its copying or moving data. Oh, and make sure that your jumper settings are right on the drive depending on which brand and model of hd encloser you get, and make sure you do not have the usb drive plugged in if you have "Boot From USB" enabled in your BIOS, or you are likely to find that you cannot even boot your computer (same if you leave your iPod plugged in). Oh, and then there is the whole issue of having to mount the drive in the encloser, because the enclosers I got have the wires attached to the encloser itself, and the wires are not long enough to hook the drive up and just see what is on the drive before you decide if you want to mount it. Annoying. In fact, you are lucky if you can manage to hook the cables up once the drive is mounted, you have a really confined space to work in.
Truthfully, if I just want to slap in an HD and see what is on it, I find it much easier to open up my case, get a long IDE cable and power cable at CompUSA or Fry's, plug it into the secondary IDE slot, and do it that way. Yeah, so I have to turn off my computer between checking out drives, but it is WAY faster and less tedious than having to mess with the external HD encloser. And what's a pretty good way to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data? Easiest way, other than completely physically destroying the platters, is to zero out the drive. The idea is to take the drive as a whole, and just write zeros over the entire drive. The DoD uses either a 3 pass wipe or a 7 pass wipe. We used a 3 pass wipe when I worked at a government contractor. However, you are probably fine with a single pass wipe. Killdisk is a program I use that is free for the single pass wipe, and it seems to take about 17 minutes a drive (your time will vary depending on size and speed of drive). -
Re:Scandalous!
As a public service, links to three excellent, free, software based HDD wiping utilities. The first is even open source
Darik's Boot and Nuke
Active Kill Disk
PC Inspector
There should never be an excuse for selling or transfering ownership of a hard drive with pre-existing data when there are fast, free, and convienient utilities that can effectively remove all data without damaging HDD functionality. Physical destruction is of course, the most secure method of permanently wiping data, but for most folks good software based data destruction should be more than sufficient.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any of the above products except as a satisfied user. -
If you want something done right...
...do it yourself.
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Some tools to add to your belt
Adaware and Spybot Search and destroy are your best place to start, but I understand your frustration. Probably three out of the last four times I've dealt with a Spyware infested machine they didn't completely do the trick on their own.
Install and run Adaware and Spybot S&D, making sure you update the programs and select to perform deep scans (within archives, etc) in the custom scan options. This will probably most of the easiest and most common exploits. Reboot.
Go through your Add/Remove programs menu and try removing any programs you can identify as spware. If the programs didn't come with an uninstaller, I would have to officially recommend you do not go through any of their steps to download one and run it. I have tried this in the past with mixed results. Some of these programs truly were just severely annoying adware that actually removed themselves at the end of this lengthy process, but some were truly malicious that simply installed MORE spyware after running the uninstaller. I recommend you don't risk this.
Open up the task manager and go through each and every process, reseaching in if need be. I use groups.google.au to get the older version which seems to provide more relavent results. Kill any processes that you find are suspiscious. Hell, kill any processes you can't identify as normal Windows OS or application processes. I dealt with a instance of spyware once that executed two randomly named processes that protected the spyware from removal. If you killed one process, the other would immediately respawn it.
Go through all of your startup locations: C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp C:\WINDOWS\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunServices HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run Start --> Run --> msconfig --> Startup tab
Once again, go through each and every item and delete or disable everything that you can identify as malicious. It's likely that when searching you will run across others who have dealt with the same spyware issues in the past and have had to figure out how to remove them.
Run your Adaware and Spybot S&D scans again. Reboot. Test your machine to see if the spyware is still there. Still have problems?
Download and run Hijack This Pour through your log once more, or alternatively post it to one of the many forums where professionals are willing to lend you a helping hand. At this point, you may also want to consider downloading and running Rootkit Revealer.
Also, try rebooting into safe mode and running your scans. Even though you are in safe mode, you should still monitor and kill processes that are suspicious. Remember, Sony's Rootkit came complete with a safe mode driver.
If all of this hasn't worked, then I suggest you back up your data, scan it for viruses, and do a low level format with a utility such as Killdisk. Now that you have to reinstall your OS, perhaps now is the prefect time to make the Linux switch. -
Shoulda used...http://www.killdisk.com/
I've only used the free demo but its a great floppy. And it runs FreeDOS too.
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KillDisk
for a moment, i kinda laughed to myself saying "who the hell would use DOS still"...
yet at that very moment i had the lowly task of wiping hard drives clean and was using a utility called KillDisk.
i i popped it in and to my amazement FreeDOS began loading program files -
Please learn how to make links.Please learn how to make links.
<a href="http://www.killdisk.com/eraser.htm">Activ e KillDisk</a>
(without the spaces put there by Slashdot) yields: Active KillDisk -
Re:Luckily for me, my Ebay'd hard drives are safe
Think I'd use killdisk before I leave the company I work for (not that I do anything wrong, but just to make sure they don't dig anything up). It allows for up to 99 passes.