Good evening from Singapore!
The foremost question which I want to ask is, what is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing hard drives?
I work for No Secrets Agency (NSA) Pte Ltd (fictitious company name used). My sales manager Edward Joseph Snowden (fictitious individual name used) had *promised* our customer Leave Me in the Lurch (S) Pte Ltd (fictitious company name used) that we would "DEGAUSS" their hard disks after the PC replacement and data migration exercise for 15 trillion PCs (fictitious number used).
PC = Personal Computer, which includes desktops and laptops
Last Friday, I had already reflected to my sales manager Edward Snowden that since we are definitely NOT going to wipe our customer's data by using strong and powerful magnets (physical means), should I send an email to the IT Administrator of our customer Lady Gaga (fictitious individual name used) asking her which data sanitization method (by software means) I should use? My sales manager Edward Snowden had quickly deflected my concerns (that is, wanting to send an email to our customer Lady Gaga asking her which data sanitization method I should use).
I had brought up to the sales manager Edward Snowden a number of data wiping methods by software means last Friday.
(1) Very very simple 1-pass data wiping, quickest
a. Using "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda", overwriting harddisks from beginning to end with zeroes, where /dev/sda refers to the 500 GB harddisk, not /dev/loop0 and not /dev/sdb which refers to the bootable live operating system on thumb drive
b. Using "sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda", overwriting harddisks from beginning to end with random data, where /dev/sda refers to the 500 GB harddisk, not /dev/loop0 and not /dev/sdb which refers to the bootable live operating system on thumb drive
Any bootable Live CD/DVD/flash media could do it.
(2) 3-pass U.S. Government/Department of Defense (DoD) standard (DoD 5220.22-M)
Certified commercial software required
(3) 7-pass U.S. Government/Department of Defense (DoD) standard (DoD 5220.22-M)
Certified commercial software required
(4) 35-pass Gutmann method, slowest
Certified commercial software required
All these was last Friday. In the midst of our argument over the cellular network "just now", my sales manager Edward Snowden tried to cover up himself by suddenly and unexpectedly making an excuse that he had told me last Friday I was supposed to wipe user data only, not the operating system!
If he had wanted me to wipe user data and retain/keep the Windows operating system, he should simply have told me to Reset the PC (for Windows 10 only) or use a =secure File Shredder=! For Windows 7, you can still wipe user data and preserve the operating system by using the Recovery Partition. On Lenovo desktops, press and hold F11 when Windows 7 is starting and reset to factory defaults.
I had advised my sales manager Edward Snowden not to use BIG WORDS like "degaussing the harddisk" and market to the customer using these big words. Any person who sees the word "degauss" would have understood it to mean sanitize *ALL* data on the harddisk straight away and without question.
Please refer to Figure 1. Exhibit A below for the "degaussing" instructions communicated to me by my sales manager Edward Snowden. Please click the link below.
URI: https://i.imgur.com/bGOMyVs.png
Please advise.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming Systems and Network Engineer Republic of Singapore 2nd April 2018 Monday 9:35 PM Singapore Time GMT+8