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Wiping a USB drive.
Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive?
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Wiping a USB drive.
On Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:00:43 -0400, nospam
wrote: In article , Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? formatting, which only needs to be done once, just marks it as blank, however, the data is still there and can potentially be scavenged. if you want to wipe the data to prevent that, you will need to write zeros to all blocks, usually called a secure erase and only one pass is needed. Thanks, does DOS have a wipe app? |
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Wiping a USB drive.
On 05.06.20 0:03, Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:00:43 -0400, nospam wrote: In article , Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? formatting, which only needs to be done once, just marks it as blank, however, the data is still there and can potentially be scavenged. if you want to wipe the data to prevent that, you will need to write zeros to all blocks, usually called a secure erase and only one pass is needed. Thanks, does DOS have a wipe app? You dont need a wipe app. Just empty the stick. then write some useless file(s) until the stick is full. |
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Wiping a USB drive.
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Wiping a USB drive.
Peter Jason wrote:
does DOS have a wipe app? A useful utility disk to have around for DOS tools is the 'original' make-up of Hiren's boot CD, now at 15.2. It has several 'erasers' for DOS, DiskWipe, HDD Eraser, & Shredder. If you don't want the whole bootable CD/USB toolkit, you can dl individual files linked from the site/page, including the erasers. https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd All in One Bootable CD which has all these utilities Later Hiren's did a Win PE type disk. https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ Hiren’s BootCD PE -- Mike Easter |
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Wiping a USB drive.
On 2020-06-04 5:11 p.m., Sjouke Burry wrote:
On 05.06.20 0:03, Peter Jason wrote: On Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:00:43 -0400, nospam wrote: In article , Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? formatting, which only needs to be done once, just marks it as blank, however, the data is still there and can potentially be scavenged. if you want to wipe the data to prevent that, you will need to write zeros to all blocks, usually called a secure erase and only one pass is needed. Thanks, does DOS have a wipe app? You dont need a wipe app. Just empty the stick. then write some useless file(s) until the stick is full. That's doing it the hard way, Like having Sex standing up in a canoe. :-) Rene |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Peter Jason wrote:
Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip (Instructions) http://www.chrysocome.net/dd Administrator Command Prompt. dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1M count=12345 Flash devices should have storage related to power-of-two numbers. The "1M" is 1 megabyte or 1048576 bytes. dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1048576 count=12345 Using dd --list you can get a summary of the device sizes. Divide the device size by 1048576, and get a number to substitute for the 12345 field in the example. This utility wipes every sector, as long as the "offset" selected is Partition0. Partition0 starts at Sector 0 of the device. This allows not only removing all private data in the partitions, but also wipes the partition table, GRUB area, all areas get wiped. Note that Disk Management lists the disks in the same order, as the "HarddiskX" field in the dd --list output. Be *especially careful* to not erase the *wrong* Harddisk0 or Harddisk1 or whatever. I expect you could even erase portions of C: if you were that careless. Like sawing off the branch you're standing on. The computer case LED should not flash, if you're erasing a USB stick. The USB stick LED should flash instead, as the erasure occurs,. If the police obtain possession of the USB stick, they can use tools to search the "spare sectors". These are not accessible from user-space all that easily, so you have to be content with erasing the visible material. The spares could contain something incriminating, that's if spares are even present. There are manufacturer utilities that give more ready access to the whole storage chip. Many of those utilities are not available to the public. Only a few have "escaped" from factories. On HDD (spinning rust), there is an Enhanced Secure Erase feature supported in hardware, which wipes both user-sectors and "spares". At least on some storage types, there are options for dealing with the hidden spares problem. The USB stick is not particularly feature rich, as hardware goes. Paul |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Paul wrote:
dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1048576 count=12345 This utility wipes every sector, as long as the "offset" selected is Partition0. Are you claiming that the "of=blah" argument represents an offset? "if" is for input file "of" is for output file Everything is a file :-) |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Andy Burns wrote:
Paul wrote: dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1048576 count=12345 This utility wipes every sector, as long as the "offset" selected is Partition0. Are you claiming that the "of=blah" argument represents an offset? "if" is for input file "of" is for output file Everything is a file :-) Partition0 = start at Sector 0 where the MBR is located (master boot record/partition table stored in 512 bytes) Partition1 = start at beginning of first MSDOS partition (may not exist) Partition2 = start at beginning of second MSDOS partition (may not exist) If you just need to "purify" an individual partition and leave the others alone, then \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 or \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2 might be your intended target. The command also supports "seek" and "skip", as explained in the manual page at http://www.chrysocome.net/dd . It's possible to use "dd" like a surgical knife... if you're good at arithmetic to work out offsets. ******* Using HxD, you can also scroll around when finished, and have a look at how complete the destruction is. A person doing this, normally seeks confirmation of the success of what they've done. When you start this program as Administrator, it can open storage devices as a raw collection of sectors. And a quick scroll will verify the job is done correctly. https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ Paul |
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Wiping a USB drive.
On 05/06/2020 00.30, Mike Easter wrote:
Peter Jason wrote: does DOS have a wipe app? A useful utility disk to have around for DOS tools is the 'original' make-up of Hiren's boot CD, now at 15.2.Â* It has several 'erasers' for DOS, DiskWipe, HDD Eraser, & Shredder. If you don't want the whole bootable CD/USB toolkit, you can dl individual files linked from the site/page, including the erasers. https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcdÂ* All in One Bootable CD which has all these utilities Later Hiren's did a Win PE type disk.Â* https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ Hiren’s BootCD PE Don't use a "secure eraser" that is designed for rotating rust media. On flash thumbs, just overwrite once. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
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Wiping a USB drive.
On 05/06/2020 00.22, Jason wrote:
In article , lid says... In article , Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? formatting, which only needs to be done once, just marks it as blank, however, the data is still there and can potentially be scavenged. if you want to wipe the data to prevent that, you will need to write zeros to all blocks, usually called a secure erase and only one pass is needed. A Quick format does nospam says, but a full format (takes a LONG time) does overwrite the data. It won't pass an NSA test - the data might be recoverable, but not with "ordinary" means. No, it will not be recoverable, on flash thumb media, by any means. The charge is either there or not. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Paul wrote:
Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip (Instructions) http://www.chrysocome.net/dd Administrator Command Prompt. dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1M count=12345 Paul, no offense but can you please stop advising very dangerous tools like 'dd' in cases where they absolutely not needed? Yes, in your - very long - story you *do* say to be careful, but that's like saying be careful when advising someone to use a handgun to hammer in a nail. The OP (Peter Jason) is not even aware (no critcism intended) of something as simple as unticking the 'Ouick-Format' option when doing a 'Format', so why advising something as complex and dangerous as 'dd'? So *please* next time you advise 'dd' (et al), look at the need, the context and most of all the (knowledge of the) person asking for help. Thank you. [...] |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Carlos E.R. wrote:
The charge is either there or not. Or for QLC drives, it may be 1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 there ... |
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Wiping a USB drive.
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul wrote: Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip (Instructions) http://www.chrysocome.net/dd Administrator Command Prompt. dd if=/dev/zero of=\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 bs=1M count=12345 Paul, no offense but can you please stop advising very dangerous tools like 'dd' in cases where they absolutely not needed? Yes, in your - very long - story you *do* say to be careful, but that's like saying be careful when advising someone to use a handgun to hammer in a nail. The OP (Peter Jason) is not even aware (no critcism intended) of something as simple as unticking the 'Ouick-Format' option when doing a 'Format', so why advising something as complex and dangerous as 'dd'? So *please* next time you advise 'dd' (et al), look at the need, the context and most of all the (knowledge of the) person asking for help. Thank you. [...] Unticking Quick Format doesn't do a thing. Untick Quick Format = clusters ignored entirely, $MFT or FAT written Select Quick Format = clusters are *read* verified (no writes) I'm providing security advice, where you've put something on media you regret, and seek to remove it. That's what "dd" is for. I did *not* suggest this utility for a reason. I'm not convinced it works properly. It takes a long time to run, and while in theory it is supposed to clean between the "teeth" of the $MFT, I'm not sure it is working as it should. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sys...nloads/sdelete On hard drives, the platform provides Enhanced Secure Erase. As proposed and pushed through the ATA standard by the guy at CMRR. Now, *that's* a proper solution. It even makes a best effort to overwrite spares. But USB sticks don't have that. "dd" remains perfectly viable for the job, and other than spares sectors being inaccessible from user-land, does the job short of dropping the USB stick "in the chipper". The manufacturer utility used to commission USB sticks, would do a better job, but only a few of those are in the hands of users (escaped from the factory). ******* There are plenty of things you can regret doing on a computer. Backups cover quite a few of them. People don't ask these questions unless they have a reason. Paul |
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Wiping a USB drive.
On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 00:11:38 +0200, Sjouke Burry
wrote: On 05.06.20 0:03, Peter Jason wrote: On Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:00:43 -0400, nospam wrote: In article , Peter Jason wrote: Does formatting several times effectively wipe a small thunb drive? formatting, which only needs to be done once, just marks it as blank, however, the data is still there and can potentially be scavenged. if you want to wipe the data to prevent that, you will need to write zeros to all blocks, usually called a secure erase and only one pass is needed. Thanks, does DOS have a wipe app? You dont need a wipe app. Just empty the stick. then write some useless file(s) until the stick is full. Thanks, this seems to work, and it's fast. All I have to do is to copy movies across up to the USB limit. |
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