by Bill Ives
June 15, 2009 at 1:49 pm
· Filed under Web 2.0
We often talk about the new transparency in enterprise 2.0. However, there are times when we need to go the other way and eliminate any access to information. Perhaps you believe the system messages and think that anything put in your trash folder and deleted goes away. Not so. You might need some expertise to find it, but is still there.
I recently spoke with Jon Johnson of WiebeTech, a subsidiary of CRU-DataPort. Jon said that as a test, they bought twenty used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents. To correct this problem, WiebeTech’s new Drive eRazer™ hardware solution erases all data from a hard drive quickly and easily. You simply plug it into the hard drive and it does the rest. Here is one of the drives.
Drive eRazer is like a shredder for electronic data, and there is even an incinerator model. Drive eRazer writes over every bit of a drive. Even after one pass, there can be ‘”ghosts” of data that experts can piece together. A second pass approach is available that takes this stuff out completely, even the ghosts. After it’s done, there’s nothing left to recover.
Jon explained that there is a secure erase function on almost all hard drives. It was developed as a standard by the industry. However, it is very hard to access and use as the industry experts did not want people easily able to accidentally delete stuff. Drive eRazer takes advantage of this utility to do its job. This can be important in a variety of contexts and is essential when you want to sell or donate your hard drives.
I certainly learned something. Drive eRazer is compliant with the Department of Defense requirements for “clearing” a “Non-Removable Rigid Disk.” The specification requires destruction of a hard drive containing government classified data.
Founded in 2000, in addition to erasing data, the focus of WiebeTech is delivering high performance portable storage solutions for consumer, business and government markets. WiebeTech also offers computer forensic devices which are critical tools used by criminal investigators collecting suspect data. In 2008, CRU-DataPort acquired WiebeTech to complement its line of data security and data mobility solutions.
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How is this different from any of the hundreds of free (and cheap) disk erasing software tools available? Typically booting from a CD or equivalent, these do multi-pass erases to all sorts of standards.
I know it’s a funky looking piece of hardware, but isn’t this just an advert?
“How is this different from any of the hundreds of free (and cheap) disk erasing software tools available?”
Short Answer:
Speed, ease of use, a more thorough erasure and no need for a dedicated computer. WiebeTech’s Drive eRazer is more than twice as fast as most software tools, is simple to use, erases areas on the hard drive that many software apps don’t even see and it doesn’t require a computer.
More Detail:
Yes, there are plenty of software drive wiping utilities, some free, many capable of multiple passes and, for certain basic applications, will hopefully work just fine. They’re clearly better than not using anything at all.
However, for anyone wanting to erase more than one drive, including IT professionals, digital forensics analysts and the legal/financial data handling industry, the faster performance of the Drive eRazer combined with DoD level data “clearing” and the fact it doesn’t tie up a computer for hours, makes the Drive eRazer an essential tool in the field as well as in the computer lab.
Besides slower speeds and tying up a computer for hours, software solutions have other inherent problems. Software usually will not properly handle HPAs (host protected areas) and DCOs (device configuration overlay), which are portions of the drive invisible to the Operating System. Data resides in these areas and can even be hidden there, meaning the drive hasn’t been truly erased. Most software applications fail to address HPAs and DCOs altogether.
Many software applications also cannot handle defective sectors due to techniques built into the drives to mask those defects from software. Another feature built into the firmware of modern hard drives (since 2001) that most software applications are unable to see is a command called “Secure Erase”, which is a multiple-pass overwrite process that includes deliberate off-track writing to clear any drifting data in the otherwise untouched track margins on the drive platter. Secure Erase is a NIST certified method for wiping a hard drive. Software applications that overwrite an arbitrarily large number of times can still have recoverable data if the overwrite isn’t directly over the original data or offset to cover “ghosting images”. The Drive eRazer Pro model executes a multiple pass ‘Secure Erase’ procedure and also handles data on “bad blocks” better than software.
Finally, software solutions often run on only one OS (i.e. Windows or Mac), requiring upgrades and forcing incompatibilities.
For years, WiebeTech, a brand of CRU-DataPort, has made digital forensics solutions used by criminal investigators to gather data evidence from hard drives and other various storage media. Using that expertise, the Drive eRazer was also designed with ease of use and affordability to make true data security attainable by more than just the professional “power user”.
Thank you for the question and I hope this information was helpful.
Jon Johnson
Executive Director, Marketing
CRU-DataPort
Used Drive ERazer? Let us know about your experiences with it
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