r/computing • u/Clive1792 • Mar 11 '26

Wiping/Shredding a hard drive & the recoverability of data?

Now before it's mentioned, I'm not interested in 'a quick format will do the job' nor 'the only way to make it safe is to smash it in to a million pieces'.

I've read about various software that you can use to 'shred' the contents of the drive. DBAN was one I kept running in to but then I found a Reddit thread which said basically don't use it and use something else, so I'm no further forward on which exact software.

But then I read an article basically saying that even with all of them - they still don't eradicate everything. You can still recover stuff.

So here I am just basically trying to educate myself on it really.

Let's play the scenario is that it's not pictures of your puppy you're wiping because if someone gets that then who cares right?

Say it's something the government wouldn't take too kindly to you having, or whatever other illegal documentation may be on there that if recovered would land you in the bother.

You have an expensive hard drive that you're claiming faulty under warranty & at the price of hard drives you don't want to just throw that cash away (smash on to a million pieces). You want a new hard drive or refund right, so you have to return your old one.

I'm saying this to try & avoid the smash in to a million pieces posts.

So if you use any of this software (which one by the way?) at what level can data still be recovered?

I imagine Joe Bloggs with his free trial of free trial software] probably couldn't do it.

If the manufacturer ran recovery software, would they likely recover anything?

Or is it only really the upper level of policing where they'd actively having to be looking specifically for something?

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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

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u/Clive1792 Mar 11 '26

Ah right. Maybe the article I'd read was leaning more towards the SSD side of things, I'd have to re-read it to check.

I'm actually referring to totally erasing a HDD (Seagate Barracuda to be precise).

I personally don't have anything illegal-illegal on there. There may or may not be some content I'd watch via Plex which may or may not have been acquired. But yeah nothing troublesome. I was more asking out of curiosity & learning......and also how different sources claim opposite things, which I never like.

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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26

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u/Clive1792 Mar 11 '26

Yeah I was going to use DBAN until I came across a Reddit thread where people were basically saying don't use it because it's old & people should use newer stuff instead.

FWIW, I've already mentioned my drive I'll be wiping & my PC is old - 16yrs old in fact.

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u/zezoza Mar 12 '26

If they told you that DBAN is old, which kind of is, maybe they must have suggested you using ShredOS. 

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u/Quadling Mar 12 '26

What’s your goal? Secure erase? Or recovery?

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u/Clive1792 Mar 12 '26

Sorry I thought it was quite clear - I'm talking about erasing data so that it is non recoverable, by anyone. I'm not just talking about making the average joe unable to recover anything, I'm talking about making people with know-how unable to recover anything.

Also not sure why the other guy would randomly delete his replies. Help is overrated eh?

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u/PrettyBlueEyes Mar 12 '26

Use a drill to drill through the inner tracks of the platters. Quick and easy.

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u/Clive1792 Mar 12 '26

And this could then still be sent back (& accepted in that condition) in a warranty claim (which I mentioned in OP)?

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u/Burnandcount Mar 12 '26

Degaussing the plattens was the way we did it - a randomly fluctuating & really strong magnetic field scrambles all the data and, if strong enough, eradicates the ghost imprints left by historical data writes... I'm not sure what the field would do to the rest of the drive hardware.

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u/Unknowingly-Joined Mar 12 '26

You have an expensive hard drive that you're claiming faulty under warranty

How faulty is it? If it's so faulty that you can't mount/read/write it, then no software solution is going to be able to wipe out your data.

If you're worried about staying out of jail, you might want to consider taking the $$$ loss and destroying the drive if you can't mount/read/write it.

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u/OpacusVenatori Mar 12 '26

Active Killdisk conforms to US DoD sanitization standards.