Right… only way to ensure deletion is to drop the whole pc into lava or similar molten metal in forges like the one that terminator kills himself in.
Can’t recover something that turned back into melted metal.
While melting down an entire PC will clearly destroy all evidence, you don’t have to go that far. 
If you wanna truly erase everything on your PC – and still keep the machine – all you need is some free software, burnable CD’s and/or USB sticks to put them on, and a lotta time to run them. The following steps will ensure ZERO means of recovering data off your PC… assuming all the data is only on that PC.
STEP 1: Zap the current partition table.
You can use GParted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Delete the old partition(s) on the HHD. Create a new partition (taking up all the available file space) using a file system that’s different from the one you used previously (i.e. if you used NTFS then use EXT4). Make sure when you format it, you use the slow format that takes forever… not the fast format that’s done in less than 30 seconds.
STEP 2: Low level format that bitch.
You can use DBAN: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/
Use the DoD 5220.22-M standard. It’s what the US military uses to erase Top Secret documents and nuclear missile launch codes. This process takes FOREVER. Took my 500GB HHD five days. Your experience may vary.
STEP 3: Low level format that bitch again, with another data nuker.
You can use Secure Erase: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
That’s right: do it again. Not only because twincest is best, but because we truly can’t trust if the DoD method alone is good enough. For one thing, the DoD method has problems with certain types of data blocks. This program - using the NSA method - does not have that problem with those data blocks (and vice versa). It’s faster than the DoD method… three hours for my 500GB HHD.
We’re using BOTH the NSA and DoD methods, to be sure we get every damn proverbial nook and cranny. On a side note, at this point, if you’re gonna destroy the HHD – this is the time to do it. Throw in a BBQ (in the coals of course) after making yourself some steaks. Leave it there overnight. Should be good enough. If you’re not destroying it, proceed to the next step…
STEP 4: Reload your OS.
You’re gonna have to rebuild your partition tables again and load your OS back on it. Do a slow format again, just to be ultra paranoid.
STEP 5: Encrypt all your data from now on.
This is important - encrypt your shit. If you don’t know anything about data encryption: LEARN IT. I cannot stress this enough. Do NOT use the encryption that comes with Windows 7. Do not use encryption you can buy off the shelf. There are FEDERAL LAWS that force commercial encryption software to give government their backdoor keys and what not. Use open source or GPL versions: here’s a start.
Some other random tidbits: Understand what can be encrypted and what can not (certain parts of certain OS can not be encrypted for them to still work - do a bit of homework). Use at least TWO hard drives. One for your operating system, and the other dedicated for your encrypted programs and archives. Encrypt as much of the OS hard drive as you possibly can, but make sure the other hard drive is 100% encrypted. Every last bit. Leave nothing in plain text. When you encrypt something, you’ll be given a private key to disable the encryption and/or decrypt it. Hide that. Memorize it if possible. Don’t store it anywhere near the machine that’s encrypted. If the gov’ment gets their hands on it, you’re fucked. Obviously don’t lose it though (or you might get locked out your own data). Disable ANYTHING that stores a copy of your system activity: pagefile, system restore, hibernation, cookies, browser cache… all that and anything else like them. Forensics can reconstruct your activity with those files. Sometimes even with encryption software, those are not encrypted because of the aforementioned thing about OS need parts unencrypted. Depends on the settings and OS. Requires more homework. Also worth noting is your RAM. Forensics can reconstruct your data off them. Not as volatile as most people think. Play a full DVD movie after each use of your machine before turing it off. Pick a G-rated film. That way if they go digging, it doesn’t have fragments of the last thing you were actually doing – just that damn movie. You also should be aware that HDD these days have cache memory in them (16MB or 32MB seem to be common). You should run a defrag or something HHD intensive to remove the last thing you were doing on those cache, in case forensics can reconstruct them too - this trick should cover your RAID card’s RAM if it has it. The RAM in your video cards should be taken care of by the DVD movie (check your card settings though; make sure it directly renders the movie player). High class NIC cards also have might have a RAM cache too - be careful about that.
Paranoia will keep you safe, when it comes to computers.
If I can comment, I think steps 1 and 3 are a waste of time =P If you dban a drive, you will never ever recover any of the data on it regardless of software or hardware tools or resources (unless there is something wrong / unusual about the drive, but I’ve never heard of this.) dban is safe. Steps 1 and 3 may give you extra comfort and if so go ahead, but they’ll be security theatre, nothing more.
As for step 5, yes. To be more specific, I recommend TrueCrypt full-disk encryption (it’s OSS like Narg suggested) mostly because it had great deniable encryption.
Basically, the concept of deniable encryption is encryption that you can plausibly deny you have- in that you can say that ‘I don’t have this encrypted data’ and, providing your keys aren’t found, nobody will be able to prove otherwise, in a court of law etc. This is to make you safe from being compelled to give up encryption keys by a court.
To give a brief idea of how deniable encryption goes: your drive is full-disk encrypted and thus contains encrypted partitions. With TrueCrypt, you also have a secret encrypted partition within your current partition (that will be safe as long as you don’t use up too much disk space- you’ll want a big harddrive for this + you’ll want to avoid using too much of it in the main partition. You need the encryption key in order to even mount the partition, but the partition will be otherwise invisible because it will look like random data - as will legitimately ‘blank’ spaces that are also on your system.
Of course, the best thing to do is to have an EXTRA deniably encrypted partition you can give away if asked about it and put stuff you’d plausibly want to keep hidden, like bank account details, credit card details, scans of your passport and birth certificate etc. If your job involves dealing with fairly sensitive data (e.g. patient records, financial records) and you can (legally) work from home with the data, keeping those there would also be good to give you a plausible reason to use deniable encryption.
You could be right… but the paranoia in me wants a more warm and fuzzy. Also a research paper says this:
I’ve never recovered from a DoD 5220 erase… but if anyone could do it, I’m betting the FBI has something that could. Again, maybe just extreme paranoia, but if I’m that worried about an HDD in my possession, why take the chance? Also to add about that volatile RAM extreme I mentioned: I think running a movie off the hard drive (mpeg or avi or some such), would fit the bill for most everything (video/hdd cache/motherboard ram) – make sure it’s a legal digital copy. 
But if you have a NIC card with onboard RAM, it’s not gonna clear that. Also worth noting: your router and switch stores information the FBI (and really good hackers) can extract off them. Check out if you can encrypt what data they store, and/or find a way to nuke that cache after each use.
This is correct, and applies not only to the DoD wipe, but to every dban wipe including the 35-pass Gutmann, and to every other software secure erasure. This is because it is impossible for ANY software to write over those portions (as the bit you quoted ends with.) The third step you gave, another software approach, will not securely erase anything that a dban pass, DoD or Gutmann, does not securely erase. So if step 2 is insufficient, step 3 will be just as insufficient. All I can suggest for the paranoid is using a disk health tool and if you’ve got bad blocks buy a new drive, copy all your stuff to it (encrypting it in the process, of course) and permanently destroy the other drive (if you’ve got access to an industrial harddrive degausser e.g. at work that’s a good first step, then physically destroy the drive).
Heck, the truly paranoid might want to do that anyway so that this stuff is never on the physical drive in unencrypted form (and the drive that the data was in unencrypted form on is permanently destroyed so there is no way of recovering it.) Just make sure you disable the swap file on your new OS install- everyone should have enough memory not to need a swap file and if you don’t, buy some more, it’s cheap stuff. Of course, you probably don’t need to do this to protect your loli eroge.
I think that this is not the right way of looking at things. The DoD wants to erase things so that there is not even a theoretical way the data could be retrieved.
If the FBI has a way to recover from an erasure procedure that is approved for scrubbing nuclear launch codes, that won’t stay true for very long. After all, the DoD can talk to the FBI and figure out exactly how that was done, and then they will modify the procedure.
Or bureaucratic dick-waving contests will prevent this from happening. I’d like to think that nuke launch code safety would be kept to a higher standard; but then there was that disturbing revelation a few years back that for a long time, the codes had all been set to 0000. They were worried they wouldn’t be able to launch because the infrastructure to deliver the codes would be destroyed. (In effect, this means there were no codes.)
Well, some points to make here:
The DoD standard in this case simply refers to a standard for overwriting data to prevent retrieval. It is not a standard that specifies how the data is to be wiped, the sort of hardware or software implementation in place to wipe it, the disposal process for old drives etc.- it’s simply a three-pass wipe that will irreversibly remove the data from the medium without any chance of recovery. The ways it could fail are the same ways ANY wipe could fail- because the design of the hardware caused the wiping process to be less effective than it should have been. The DoD would know about this and have a fairly detailed set of procedures in place for the disposing of drives, especially ones that may have contained classified information- but these aren’t detailed in 5220.
Now, things of great import to national security typically tend to assume corner cases and multiple worst-case scenarios and tend to contain multiple redundant steps to ensure things go to plan. I would sincerely hope that drives that had nuclear launch codes on them are not simply wiped over with DoD 5220 and sold at auctions.
Yes. Your recovery partition/recovery disks will not securely erase the data they erase.
To elaborate a bit - there is a difference between delete and erase. Computers essentially use a giant filing system to store your files. Deleting a file simply removes the file from the filing system; the data is still being stored in the warehouse, but the system is unable to find it. (It will eventually get overwritten when that part of the disk is used to store new data, but that can take time.) Erasing the file implies that you go to the spots in the warehouse where the file is being stored, destroy the data, and then delete the filing system information.
But it takes longer to completely erase something than to simply delete it. Generally when people are using a recovery partition, they are recovering from a failure, not trying to delete sensitive information. They’re interested in getting up and running as soon as possible. So instead of going through the entire disk and wiping every sector to ensure all the data is gone, they almost certainly simply overwrite the filing system with a new (empty) filing system, and then copying the files from the recovery disk onto the hard drive. This will generally only actually overwrite a small portion of most modern disks.
Well, is there a way to permanently erase select data while leaving the rest of your computer intact? Disk Wipe seems to just clear the entire disk… Why are we even talking about this, again?
The short answer is no. There is essentially no way to securely delete a single file. There are too many places in modern operating systems where data can be copied in the normal course of operation. There is no way, for instance, to completely clear out the various caches. The virtual RAM file on your computer may - and if you have used the file, probably DOES - contain fragments of the file. The hard drive itself has memory used for caching, and may or may not contain fragments of the file. There’s no easy way to erase it. And in the normal course of use, the OS may make temporary copies of the file, and then “delete” them … leaving the original open for recovery by that route.
In general, if you have something and you need it gone, you have to wipe the drive securely.
I gotta be honest here. After reading all this stuff about encryption, erasure vs. deletion, and all this other technical garbage, I gotta ask: Why the hell would the government even waste its own time hacking through your hard drives? Seriously we’re talking about file-deletion techniques that not even the department of defense can crack through–What sort of plausible situation could possibly warrant such measures in the first place?
My god, this talk about encryption and deleting files started because some guy at a Canadian airport got caught with manga porn on his computer. Do you honestly believe that the Canadian TSA even have the time and knowledge to hack into his computer and find the “child porn”? No. If you go through customs at a Canadian airport with a laptop, they turn it on and have you open the disk tray to make sure if you’re not sneaking anything inside. THAT’S IT.
What most likely happened was he didn’t password-protect his computer, and when the customs officials turned it on, it went straight to his desktop. From there, he must’ve had something that attracted their attention (like a sexually suggestive anime wallpaper), and they started digging around.
Yet all this talk about data encryption and file deletions ensues for weeks. Really, do you guys think these incidents happen because police officials are somehow able to track anything and everything? Hell no. Most of these things happen because people fail to take the most basic of security measures–Someone leaves their laptop with porn visible, then some random passerby sees it and reports it to the police; some dumbass decides to print porn in a fucking public library with lots of people around instead of doing it at the privacy of his home; some imbecile decides that it’d be a bright idea to store porn on a government-owned computer that’s known to be monitored. If you guys are that afraid of “getting caught”, you’re more likely to get caught by failing to take basic precaustions and failing to consider your surroundings, as opposed to not using deniable full-disk encryption.
Really, if you’re that afraid, you’re more likely to do much more by simply password-protecting your computer (do I even have to say this?), making sure your computer has a screensaver that becomes password-protected after being inactive for 5-10 minutes (for when you want to leave it on without constant supervision), and keep your “personal” shit at home and on your OWN computer (A HUGE biggie–something a lot of people don’t seem to understand). Seriously, this does far more than getting some high-tech encryption software or finding ways to destroy your hard drive. Hell, you can even protect more than just your “stash” by doing this, such as banking info, credit records, tax information, and so on.
It’s just simple security measures and situational awareness that make all the difference. Seriously.
Who pissed in your cornflakes? The rant your ranting about, only took place across August 9 to August 11. That’s a whole whooping [u]THREE[/u] days. Then someone then necro’ed the issue on the 3rd of this month (26 days after the last comment). What strikes me as irony, is that the matter probably would have gone and died again had you not gone all postal three days AFTER it was necro’ed. The answer to your question, could easily be Googled (all pros and cons) if you wanted an honest answer, but I assume you just wanna start a mindless back and forth argument and proclaim how everyone’s opinion is stupid except your own. Not gonna waste time on that… just point out how your argument to proclaim other people’s comments as pointless, is equally pointless.
And now for something totally random, because it at least makes this otherwise completely useless response somewhat useful.
EDIT
Correction: I go back to double check, and I see the encryption talk starts back on June 6th. Whoopie. So it does take place over a few weeks… though really as a “post once a week” type deal, and not a long drawn out “day-by-day” kind of thing. But meh… I’ll give you that it went over a course of weeks then… Still doesn’t make your rage any less pointless, but what the hell, I’ll give credit where it’s due.
I have just one question…how does making pie from those apples enter into the equation? lol
If the yandere didn’t turn the apple into a pie, people still die.
Doesn’t turning an apple into a pie involve some pretty severe physical violence being done to the apple? I’m not sure this is the correct analogy. After all, technically a yandere doesn’t want to hurt the nice apple. She’s just perfectly willing to make applesauce if it’s necessary.
By the way anyone heard of this movie that apparently is famous for being rejected by MST3K?
Well, look who’s at it again:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 … nime/games
I’m starting to wonder if hikikomoris have more of a life than these politicians since this seems to be their lifelong goal
Pathetic populism. I hope they never get back in power.
It’s just politicans throwing smoke and mirrors to keep the populace in a stupor.
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Japan’s economy is going through the same havok Europe and America are experiencing (debt, housing, and unemployment)
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The aftermath of the Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Disaster are still there.
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Healthcare system needs major rework or it will face a financial meltdown.
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Disputes with both Koreas, China, and Russia are going no where.
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The United States is still causing issues (slow military base moves, refusal to share military technologies, import/export problems, etc).
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Reports of corrupt political officals still happens at least once a month.
List goes on and on. The elected morons are looking for easy targets to pick on, so they don’t like the incompetant fools they actually are. :roll:
Japanese people aren’t that dumb. Voters are more concerned with how to pay the bills and take care of grandma, than they are about cartoon pornography.