Disk wiping and data forensics: Separating myth from science

[JMH]

Decommissioning systems for disposal or resale requires the secure deletion of data originally stored on the drives; however, the process of doing this is often based more in superstition than in science. These methods may have had some utility 20 years ago, but are not valid for newer drive formats.

Before moving forward, there are a few considerations to be mindful of in this inquiry.

1. From a data security standpoint, destroying hard drives is preferable to wiping them. This is not always possible, and — depending on your level of precaution — you may want to wipe the drives before handing them off to a third party for destruction.
2. The data on the drive should be encrypted to begin with, particularly on solid-state drives. Data recovery is basically impossible in cases where the drive data is encrypted.

Disk wiping and data forensics: Separating myth from science - TechRepublic

 

[Digerati]

I never believed doing more than a single pass wipe for hard drive was necessary. If your data was that sensitive that a bad guy would (1) target you specifically and (2) spend the time and resources to recover data from your drives, it is better to simply destroy the drive. I recommend drilling 3 or 4 holes through the drive and platters for that. Or, if you want to work out some aggression, smashing them with a 8 - 16lb sledge hammer works too. Wear eye protection in either case.

SSDs do present new challenges but modern wipe programs work for them too (I use the one in CCleaner). So does a big hammer.