Methods of Erasing Data

What are the different erasing methods?

Words from your friends possibly had suggested that you should use a hammer and physically break the hard drives to secure your data. However, this is not entirely true! All you need to do is to erase your HDD or SSD before throwing them out or returning for warranty. Below are the different methods of erasing:

  • NSA: Data is overwritten twice with random numbers and once with zeros.
  • DoD: Data is overwritten by a random number, then by its complement, then by another random number, and is then verified.
  • Random Numbers: Data is overwritten multiple times with random numbers. The number of overwrites can be selected from 1 to 9.
  • BSI/VSITR: Data is overwritten 7 times with the following patterns: 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xAA.
  • Secure Erase: Data is overwritten using an algorithm that is built in to the hard disk drive.
  • Format: The hard disk is formatted. Data is not overwritten.

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