Saturday, November 20, 2010

What Happens During A hard Drive Wipe

By Kelly Bean


A hard drive wipe refers to a secure deletion procedure that results in no traces of the data that used to be stored on the wiped hard drive. This is generally performed using specialized software programs created for this purpose. It ought to be known that a hard drive wipe is different from and much more secure than merely deleting all the files which are on a hard drive.

The reason being when a file is deleted, it is not really completely removed from the hard disk. What actually happens is that the file is just marked as having been deleted, and the hard disk space which it occupies is marked as being ready for use. So the file is no longer listed in its directories. Furthermore, the space in which a deleted file is contained may actually be overwritten by new data being put into the hard disk.

For numerous applications and users, this file deletion might be sufficient. A more thorough deletion would just be a waste of system resources, and thus is generally not implemented. Nevertheless, there are certain cases in which the more secure deletion that a hard drive wipe affords becomes desirable.

For instance, computers that handle critical information might eventually be reassigned, or replaced. In this case, it may be ideal to ensure that the important information could not be recovered later on, in case malicious acts may be done with this data at hand. For example, financial information for example credit card numbers, account numbers, and balances may be recovered from hard drives which are recycled but not wiped clean.

Similarly, even personal computers might benefit from a hard drive wipe, for example when they are being resold or given away. The simple precaution of doing a hard drive wipe might prevent or at least lessen the risk of identity theft and the acquisition of any other vital personal information.

One of the simplest methods to perform a hard drive wipe is to acquire a copy of a hard drive wipe program which can automatically run from a CD or other removable storage device. Generally, the hard drive wipe process then just consists of plugging the storage device that contains the appropriate program into the computer to be wiped clean.

A hard drive wipe functions by overwriting the existing data with random data, frequently many times. This has the effect of covering the previously existing data and making it almost impossible to recover. The standard number of overwrites runs from 7 all the way up to 35 layers of overwriting data.

Hard drive wiping also assists by being a more environmentally-friendly alternative to physical destruction of the hard drive. When disposing of a hard drive containing confidential information, the user may wish to opt to have the drive physically rendered unusable. However, recycling facilities exist that would repurpose the hard drive. To get this done, they're needed by law to wipe the hard drives in order to make any previous data unrecoverable.

The hard drive wipe is a useful procedure that's becoming increasingly more necessary in this information age.




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