| Author | Message | ||
     Sam Username: shirow Registered: N/A |
I'm trying to wipe the contents of a Western Digital HD that the BIOS is reporting as SMART failure. The disk is physically accessible via WinHex and most of the files have been recovered this way. The 2 partitions are visible in the Windows XP-32 explorer, but only accessible and recoverable in WinHex. If I try to access by Win explorer it hangs and says no format is present in the partition. These partitions are also visible and unmountable in Paragon HD Manager, but the file system appears to be unrecoverable by conventional methods (chkdsk, Paragon, etc). My question is, if it is possible to wipe a lot of files or all of them containing confidential data, or the whole partition or disk, and make them irrecoverable prior to claim my disk warranty. The problem is that when wiping irreversibly, a Win Explorer-based window is showing, from where I can't select any file cos it hangs for a while and says no format present. Is there any way of overriding this situation? Some ways, perhaps? Thanks a lot. Hope my english was good enough... | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
You would probably have to wipe the entire hard disk. However, maybe that's not possible completely because of the problems the hard disk has. Tools | Open Disk (select physical hard disk), Edit | Fill Disk Sectors. If the file system is damaged, this is also the only possibility to wipe. It's also the most thorough option, better than only wiping existing files. | ||
| Sam Username: shirow Registered: N/A |
Thanks, Stefan. I got to wipe the two partitions this way, or at least, the begining of them, until an access error popped up, which I hope was enough to prevent recovering my files... Thanks again. | ||
| Duncan Clarke Username: dac_retrodata Registered: N/A |
If security is an issue, why not physically destroy the hard drive and smash the platters? Hard drives are practically consumable items these days. Duncan |