I'm going to be quitting my job soon and I will probably be asked to turn over an external hard drive they reimbursed me for (they know I will use it for both my personal and work stuff). I've since offloaded all the personal documents to a different HD.
How should I securely wipe the free space to make sure they cannot recover any of my personal files? Will the Gutmann method in eraser work?
just drop it off a building before you hand it over.
Also, I deleted the files with bleachbit, then used cipher \w to wipe the free space but recuva was able to find many of the deleted files.
Expose it to light
Quitting your job is for fucking losers
I might hate a lot of these people, but I still want to be as professional as possible. That said, I did consider having accidents involving the microwave and boats.
fill the entire drive with a single shitpost image and earse it all. Rinse and Repeat.
turn it on and give it a good shake while it spins
DBAN
run a magnet over it to properly align all of the 0s so that they'll run more effectively for the company when they reuse it
Use bleachbit. Seems even the fbi could not recover Hillarys emails so what chance do your employers have.
Tried that already. Basic bitch recuva was able to recover files from that even after a cipher pass after the bleachbit run.
I dident know user, I thought bleachbit was good. Another suggestion is you could say it has been stolen or you left it on the bus on the way to work.
Might be able to get away with that, but I was a very important part of the development staff, and the company's entire program and data is on there so they'd certainly investigate.
If you are using a Linux-based OS, use this command:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd(x) bs=4096 status=progress
where (x) is the letter assigned to the serial device by linux. /dev/zero is a linear stream of zero bits that can be used to securely erase all of the data on a serial-device, the dd program will write a 0 for each and every bit on the HDD, so it is very important that you identify the correct serial-device letter because if you choose the wrong one you will erase all of the data on that device. lsblk can be used to identify what letter has been given to the device, if you know what the data capacity of the HDD is then use that information to identify which drive it is. If you have more than one HDDs with the same capacity connected to your system, then execute the lsblk command with the HDD disconnected, connect the HDD to your system, then execute the lsblk command again and note the difference in the output.
Why did you not setup a luks partition for private stuff?
Back up everything from the hard drive to the cloud or dvd (except your files) and if the hard drive gets stolen or lost on the bus then at least you can tell them that you had the good sense to back the drive up and everything should be fine.
Write it with zeroes hundred times.
Also, would encrypting whole drive a couple of times help? Just curious, don't know much about how data is stored in drives
Company is going down the shitter anyways. If I don't quit, the company will quit me. Either way, I'm out of a job and it's about to get ugly soon.
>zero
>not random
>Company is going down the shitter anyways
imo this is when they need u the most, but it's ok if you're a puss and can't handle a little bit of STEP THE FUCK UP
They want to shitcan me.
let em then ride that unemployment and maybe try the welfare program while you're at it, baby ass nigger.
Hey anons. Forensic data recovery expert here. This user is mostly right but you need a minimum of two passes due to the tendency of the magnetic disk to be slightly in the direction of the previous state. For a one size fits all irrecoverable data wipe:
shred -vuzn 3 /dev/DRIVE
Where you can get the correct drive by looking under ls /dev/disk/by-id/ or df.
Is gutmann still good?
>Hey anons. Forensic data recovery expert here.
>Recommending a zero-write and not a random one
> not knowing that there is a non zero change that random outputs real data including cp
Gutmann is overkill and really only applies to very old HDDs. It just has you wait around for a day while you kill the life expectancy of your HDD. There is a lot of hand waving and speculation around data recovery. In reality we need an electron microscope for anything past 1 pass, and if it's 2 passes plus a zero pass (shred -vuzn 3) I can't tell you anything that was on the original drive.
keep succing boomer cock, faggot
Yes hello, forensic user here. Kill yourself, the shred flag just adds one pass of zero onto the specified number of random.
You implied that in order to wipe the entire free space he should do multiple passes - which is highly sensible - of zero-writes. Why would you recommend zero writes over random writes, especially as a so called forensic expert? I myself majored in digital forensics and my guess is you're one of those faggots who know how to use the tools supplied to them and that's it, just neck yourself.
$~>man shred
Whoa, you're full of shit
I knew that shred was the final solution, but it it does exactly in one wipe?
The question isn't whether or not it's still good, but whether it's at all necessary. Read his own epilogues:
cs.auckland.ac.nz
That wouldn't be 4 passes? 3+zero
Top kek
Read the man entry alredy.
enjoy having fragments of data noise that stand out against the zero background and serve as puzzle pieces that can be reconstructed
I am well aware what shred does, but OP stated he wants to wipe the free space, not the whole drive. You are shredding the entire drive you genius.
All these Philosophiae doctors in Data Forensics. Suddenly all on Sup Forums at 0:24 CET.
Kek where did I imply any of this? DAMAGE CONTROL MAXIMUM.
First pass including all successive passes are random, final pass zero, then you'll be set. Thanks for showing me some people on Sup Forums can use manpages lol, just not the CSIII over here that claims they are right cuz their degree
>Kek where did I imply any of this? DAMAGE CONTROL MAXIMUM.
>Hey anons. Forensic data recovery expert here. This user is mostly right but you need a minimum of two passes due to the tendency of the magnetic disk to be slightly in the direction of the previous state.
>This user is mostly right but you need a minimum of two passes due to the tendency of the magnetic disk to be slightly in the direction of the previous state.
>Only issue with his statement are the passes
> implying OP can't just use this solution and repartition, moving the old files back over
If OP meant that then he can still use shred, it's lot easier than any other command you'll come up with
He could do this, but you could instantly tell he did, whether this is of significance to him I don't know.
>If OP meant that then he can still use shred, it's lot easier than any other command you'll come up with
Shred cannot do the empty space as in unused clusters in between files, you will need specialised tools for this.
Mkay to make all of the CSIII graduates here happy with the 100k in student loans and implying OP doesn't just want to securely delete his drive rather than "securely delete the unallocated space in between the clusters of files":
> mount drive
> copy files off
> shred -vuzn 3 DRIVE
> copy files back to the drive
>with the 100k in student loans
Sorry user, not an amerifat
>> mount drive
>> copy files off
>> shred -vuzn 3 DRIVE
>> copy files back to the drive
see >He could do this, but you could instantly tell he did, whether this is of significance to him I don't know.
I've already started the gutman method on the free space. I'm not concerned about going against the NSA/FBI/CIA, but I want to make it hard enough that some intern with recuva or whatever he google searched cannot get my personal files.
Lmfao OP doesn't care, it doesn't take a phd to know that he just wants to securely delete his weird porn off the drive he's returning to his employer. Even if that was the case, that couldn't "know" as you say because they don't have the original drive. And what the fuck are they gonna do even if they did know he securely erased the drive? They still wouldn't have OP's files.
>And what the fuck are they gonna do even if they did know he securely erased the drive? They still wouldn't have OP's files.
As I said, I don't know whether it is of significance to OP.
According to it apparently isn't.
>Even if that was the case, that couldn't "know" as you say because they don't have the original drive.
But you can. If you reformat the drive and write the files back, there will be no signs of filesystem wear/usage. Meaning that all your files will be written neatly cluster after cluster, suggesting the only thing you ever did on the drive was sequentially writing files.
Hahaahhaha
Literally "I just copied my files onto the drive and I don't know what you're talking about".
Prove me wrong.
Sure a normal HDD looks different with daily usage but you can't prove I did literally anything by observation of how the files are written. I could buy a HDD, back up my files once, and they'll be written the same way.
Are you actually retarded?
If it's necessary to prove your claim wrong, there will not be any need to do it in the first place, as normal companies won't care about you erasing the drive. It's about probability and plausibility you retard.
I bought this HDD and backed up my files to it. Prove me wrong.
Read the post you're replying to again.
Are you doing a schtick or are you really that dense? Companies exploit workers. It has nothing to do with being a man to keep eating shit. That's literally what a slave does you fucking hypocrite
Let's just say I was brought up with a fucking WORK ETHIC
lel if you think a company ACTUALLY cares about their employees you are completely retarded.
He's a pass-flashing tripfag, what do you expect?
> I can't tell the difference
> fuk
> what did my CSIII lectures say in this situation
> P-P-PROBABILITY VS PROBABILITY
btfo /thread
...then why would they hire them
1 pass isn't enough.
Go for 7 or 8 passes...
Are you unable to comprehend my post?
Let me spell it out for you:
If your employer needs to definitively prove you wrong, there is no reason to hide the fact in the first place.
If probability and plausibility are essential, as in it is crucial that your employer will not doubt you, then you'd rather not.
I had knowledge they needed, and they are going to shut down (but will pivot as part of their death throes), and I found a better job that is more in line with my career goals.
They are nice to you as long as they need you (hence why they paid for the HD), but they'll do shit like preventing you from advancing your career to trap you into roles they need you for. For example, I was blocked from going to conferences despite the fact that I had the most knowledge of how the whole thing worked.
Shitty way to treat employees, but I'm not surprised since it's in their interest.
They can have their code and data. I just care about my personal files.
This but this
My career is the opposite, management pushes you along even if u don't want it.
I'm of the opinion that you're really good at your LAST job, not necessarily your CURRENT job
Did you do the entire drive including any hidden partitions? It could have a recovery partition it's utilizing.
Still on the gutmann pass but I should check once it's through. In windows explorer I only saw 1 partition.
The HD was received straight from amazon, and I asked them for the reimbursement after I paid for and received it so there's no chance at all that they (the company I'm quitting) installed anything extra on it.
Remember to trigger the drive's internal "secure erase" function as the last step, after you are done overwriting.
Overwriting the disk does nothing to erase data in remapped sectors, but the drive's internal "secure erase" function is supposed to handle them.
Back up entire contents of hard drive to the cloud or other backup device. Once hard drive is backed up then wipe hard drive with whatever method is the most secure. Test recovery tools on wiped hard drive to see if any data can be extracted. If no data can be extracted then copy files back to hard drive minus personal data. Job done.
>WARNING: Do not attempt to do this through a USB interface!
It's an external drive.
Don't quit just stop doing stuff and wait until they fire you. You can get at least a couple days pay for doing nothing.
At this point I'm pretty sure I can pull that and last about 2-3 more weeks since they need me for the transition period. Thing is I'm a professional so I won't do that.
Then pull it out of the enclosure, and hook it to a spare system to wipe it, then put it back.
From what I understand the hard drive is encrypted by default and will only be read by the proprietary circuitry in the enclosure.
I don't know if that will do anything.
>I'm a professional so I won't do that.
kek, spotted the work ethic cuck
"encrypted" means that they set the drive's master password; that's why you aren't supposed to trigger a secure erase over USB; the process requires you to set a master password that you know, and use it to verify the erase command.
If the controller sets the master password, you can't trigger a wipe.
Have they asked you for the drive back yet?
No, but I'm expecting that they will once I quit.
LMAO paranoid much?
Like WTF could you be doing that is so horrible that you don’t want anyone to find out? Like if you don’t want to talk about it, why the fuck would you do it?
No wonder you’re quitting: the company isn’t going under, you’re just a paranoid, autistic virgin
Buy a blank HDD of the identical type and give them that instead?
Boot off of a Linux live disk and run the command
fdisk -l to find the correct drive
cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda (or whatever the drive is named)
Just write in plain text _fuck_you_ over the entire partition
Dban or just use Eraser on Windows
>dd
>not using yes
How do you write over the partition in plain text?
That won't do anything to a modern drive that writing random data won't, the Gutmann pass was designed for a specific recording method that hasn't been used in years.
DBAN using the Gutmann method. Then have a happy little accident where it "somehow" gets physically destroyed.
See
with marker obviously
okay well whatever fuckin method then
There was an actual study on exactly that. It's pretty much a random chance if an employee is going to be good further up the rung with jobs.
Ah so your daddy was a lowly construction worker who never got union support.
why not just buy new one and hand it over?
Use an industrial magnet over it and return it
I never used bleachbit but it may be possible that it is not wiping the MFT which means even though the file itself doesn't exist anymore, its metadata is still there.
I tested both Moo0 Anti-Recovery and CCleaner wipe disk and as far as recuva goes,it can't recover shit.
>I'm of the opinion that you're really good at your LAST job, not necessarily your CURRENT job
This is actually called Peter principle:
en.wikipedia.org
Studies show that is actually better to the company to pick a random person to promote than the best person at the current task
> giving that cancerous trolling faggot all of those (you)'s
The fuck is wrong with you people..?
Anyway OP, this. , but at least 5 passes. Mount up a live linux disk if you have to.
If you're really that worried, bleach bit it a few few times and then writes random bits to it to fill capacity with dd. Bleach bit again. Then throw it into a volcano.
If HDD use ccleaner with clean free space + secure deletion on, or DBAN.
If SSD use the tool provided by the manufacturer to securely wipe off the data
Or if you're really paranoid buy another drive and give it to them instead, that is what i would do.
Also what kind of cheap ass enterprise ask to return a fucking drive.
A failing business with no money left. I think they would be more worried about what's on the drive.
>You implied that in order to wipe the entire free space he should do multiple passes - which is highly sensible - of zero-writes.
You're a fucking idiot. Go read the manual imbecile.