Fill the drive 100% using data duplicator then delete everything on the drive. Repeat a few times to ensure you scrub all blocks. There is no need to physically destroy the drive.
edit: fair criticism of this approach in cases when the data is unencryptd and the hard drives has bad blocks. I just wanted to give a counter to the destroying hardware approach which isn’t necessary warranted
That doesn’t work with SSDs anymore. Their controllers map “bad” blocks which are put in an RO state and writes no longer go there but data still exists. There is usually a buffer of extra space so you do see the capacity loss, but if you bypass the controller you can still read the data there.
That’s fair, I can appreciate an attack vector in cases where there are bad blocks and the drive was unencrypted. Luckily bad blocks are less common with modern SSDs and assuming the disk was encrypted, a few bad blocks are unlikely to expose any contents. So knowing the number of bad blocks and what data was stored would inform if a fill and empty approach would be suitable to sanitize the drive.
This article covers several methods. Personally, I’d look for a BIOS based tool first, as that would be free and easiest. After that, the Diskpart Clean All command is probably fine for anything other than Top Secret data which a government based threat actor would be willing to put a lot of resources into recovering. If it’s just your tax documents and porn archive, no one is going to care enough to dig out anything which that command might have left behind.
If it’s really sensitive shit, you should beat the shit out of it with a sledgehammer and make sure you got all the nand modules(see diagram online), then throw parts of it into a large body of water, deeper the better
For an ssd you’ll have faster and better results with veracrypt, delete the key then call the drives secure erase.
5220 was for media that actually gave the user real access to block level read and write. Nowadays even spinning media presents you with an abstraction.
If it’s really an issue where “if the data on this SSD falls into the wrong hands, lives will be ruined” sort of thing, my favorite data security tool for this job is a bench grinder. Difficult to put the data back together when the flash chips are powder scattered throughout 14 different shop surfaces and at least two lungs.
This is the correct answer. Due to wear levelling, a traditional drive wipe program isn’t going to work reliably, whereas most (all?) SSDs have some sort of secure erase function.
It’s been a while since I read up on it but I think it works due to the drive encrypting everything that’s written to it, though you wouldn’t know it’s happening. When you call the secure erase function it just forgets the key and cycles in a new one, rendering everything previously written to it irrecoverable. The bonus is that it’s an incredibly quick operation.
Are you considering using the drive afterwards? Because “toss it in a microwave for like 5 minutes” is always a valid answer if you’re not worried about reusing it.
Whoever might need, for whatever reason, to write on a parchment sheet which had already been written, should take some milk and should put the parchment in it for one night’s time. As soon as it is taken out, it should be strewn with flour in order that it not be wrinkled after it begins to dry, and so as to be kept under pressure until it dries out. After it is done, the parchment will regain its former quality, shining and lucid, by means of pumice stone and chalk.
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