How do I securely wipe a drive before selling it?

How do I securely wipe a drive before selling it?

Sledgehammer not an option, it's a 256gb ssd so I can get like 100 bucks for it.

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You cant secure wipe an SSD; unless manufacturer provides you with a way to wipe it.

> inb4 you're wrong
No I'm not faggot, learn how flash tech works

Best thing you can do is encrypt the drive, then fill it with random data, and then try to recover data to ensure its actually wiped.

Why dont you try to fix ur life and get help to cure your pedophilia? Not even memeing

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>then fill it with random data
or any data, since it's encrypted?
I suppose zeros wouldn't be appropriate, but /dev/random will take a lot longer?
urandom to be safe I suppose

DBAN?

urandom/random are effectively the same (go read the source).

Since it's encrypted a brute-force could be tried on the key, i'd kill header of the key so they couldnt try to brute force it.

just kill the person you sell it to, problem solved

Just put shiny icons into recycle bin. You're welcome :v

also you could sell it to yourself, that way you know shiny icons won't leave recycle bin :3

actually the best way to do it is by redirection. load it up with cp and then if anyone goes looking for your secrets they'll focus on that instead of what you were trying to hide.

dban, if you're super paranoid the 7-pass DoD level one.
Or if you trust the manufacurer/SSDs in general, use the secure erase tool

ATA_SECURE_ERASE

DBAN doesn't guarantee anything on an SSD. It wastes erase cycles, will wipe MOST blocks but makes no guarantees. It will miss any blocks that the drive has taken out of circulation and replaced with spares, as it may do if it detects a block is wearing out.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear

As others have suggested, simply overwrite the drive with random data using dd on Linux, three complete runs. I believe there is also a package called Shred which will allow you to run the overwrite multiple times, etc. without a script if you're lazy. This should keep you safe from most anyone except state-level actors. If that's still not good enough for you, you need to shred that baby until it's powder and scatter it all over.

>DoD level
you know they just shred the drive right?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
replace /dev/sdb with whatever device your drive is, i think you could alternatively use /dev/urandom

You'll want to do a few overwrite passes for an SSD, to make sure you get all the blocks.

Or just ATA_SECURE_ERASE, it's quicker, more thorough, and doesn't burn as many erase cycles.

Do as yourself who you're trying to stop from recovering anything. A curious buyer looking for anything juicy? Simply overwriting all sectors once will do it, even if stuff persists in blocks the device doesn't expose to the computer -- they aren't going to destroy the drive to connect the flash chip to special reader hardware.

Defrag it a couple of times.

Thermite is the only way to be sure

thermite

now im a retard so this might be the stupidest thing you hear all week, but instead of wiping it, couldnt you just fill it with non-sensitive data? like pictures of anime girls taking up all 256 gb?

termites only eat wood and hdds are metal

Retard

you're not using the right kind of termite

It used to be a thing in the late 80s. People who write hard drive software like to pretend they're living 20~30 years in the past rather than admit they can only push the pedals and read the idiot lights like everyone else.

False. They do seven passes. Shred. Then burn the remains.

Why wouldn't that work

but can you use zeros in an encrypted partition to "wipe" it, since it's writing something other than zero. Sure, they'll be able to crack it since it's all the same, but nevertheless it's overwritten?

where do i get disk eating termites? are they dangerous?

Actually, a single pass of zero is about as good as you can do.

All modern filesystems have a cluster size that's bigger than a single sector, the smallest writable unit on the disk. If any of your pictures have a partial cluster at the end, those few sectors won't be overwritten. And of course if you're left with any free space at the end, that won't be overwritten either. And if you had anything sensitive stored in the MFT (like filenames or files so small their contents are stored there), that might not be overwritten.

Its not good to use DBAN on an SSD. I think the best option is to fill the entire SSD with random data (movies, video files, music, etc). This overwrites everything that was previously on that drive.

afghanistan

i thought afgan termites ate afgans not disks

You're best off encrypting everything then formatting it, that's the only way to make sure that no one will ever get it. Since you're probably not worried about state actors trying to recover it's content bleachbit or something will probably suffice.

Gutmann pass.in b4 some FBI agent claiming it's unnecessary.

this is a pretty clever way of hiding stuff

wtf are you talking about
/dev/random gives very few bytes/minute
urandom is just an endless stream as fast as your cpu
at least that's how it used to be a few years ago

single pass of zeroes if its a mechanical drive...

secure erase command if it's SSD, you'll need linux or manufacturer software to do it though.

but it is user

>it's a 256gb ssd so I can get like 100 bucks for it
256gb Evo 850/860 can be found for $80-90, only a retard would pay more for an used SSD

I thought trim made data recovery impossible on a SSD. Am I retarded?

same thing

i dont store my data on a blanket silly

no there's an angry little muslim man inside the metal box

what do i use for an intel optane drive though? wouldn't that have a little jew inside instead?

it has a muslim and a jew fighting

what do i get if i want only a jew so i can pit it against my hdd?

'sup Mr. Agent sir.

a CD

why a cd?

dban you dumb cunt

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>How do I securely wipe a drive before selling it?
use hdparm to run secure erase. Anything else is a waste of time and won't wipe bad sectors.

anyone who is advocating application level overwriting is just silly.

you dont. there is always something to recover unless you do physical damage to the drive