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no, i'm not making a virus... i've got sensitive stuff on my computer, so i'd like to make a program that when windows starts it checks if it's actually in my computer, then if not wipes all data so that it can't be recovered. or actually just a few folders. like, it'd check info about the pc, like vendor or model number or speed or whatever. and i know you hafat do more than just deleting all the files cause recovery programs can get em back.
I'd suggest you change your topic from "destroy hard drive" to "destroy EXE file" which is QUITE a different thing. No one here is going to help you destroy a hard drive, but wiping out an EXE file is something else. You'll probably have to do it by creating a second EXE that gets kicked off under certain exit conditions after the main EXE finishes because an active EXE can't open itself as a file.
Let alone perform a low-level format of a current active partition with the OS running ... Or for your purposes running a program to overwrite with garbage the specific sectors of a file multiple times with patterned data and then white noise to completely erase even the ghost of the previous contents ...
i dont think that you can destroy the HDD Data
as i think the data can be still Retrived if a low level performs
try to write on 0 sector ( set this secort as BAD )
may be this can help you
i don't wanna destroy just one exe... i wanna wipe out a few different folders.Quote:
Originally posted by phinds
I'd suggest you change your topic from "destroy hard drive" to "destroy EXE file" which is QUITE a different thing. No one here is going to help you destroy a hard drive, but wiping out an EXE file is something else. You'll probably have to do it by creating a second EXE that gets kicked off under certain exit conditions after the main EXE finishes because an active EXE can't open itself as a file.
the ability to wipe out "a few folders" is exactly the same as the ability to wipe out the whole hard drive, so your original thread subject was correct and I don't think anyone here is going to help you.
it is really hard to tell if the information you want deleted is really deleted or not. When you delete a file, the system place a special code at the beginning of the filename ( see http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...tDeletion.html ) After this the more disk work you do, the better your chances are of overwritting the space on the disk the file actually was. Now if you could know where on the disk the file was physically stored, and then access that location, the job would be easy, but I know of no way to do this. A simple defrag may do the job since it does alot of disk work but how can you really know?
kevin
So, like phinds saying wiping large amount of data is a bad thread for this forum. But you can still do the following, which is a very normal way to hide forever confidential data files:
1) Locate the files by using the filelist control for example.
2) Open these files for binary, write on them zeroes until the EOF.
3) The filename still exists, now KILL it with this strong VB command. No recycle-bin option for KILL, as you know.
This will do a kind of "wipe" you want. Also tested with DOS 6.0 "undelete" command. It cant recover the original files in any way. Plus to all this have in your mind that even if there is a chance for someone to recover a KILLed (and zeroed) file, then I think THERE IS NO WAY of recovering it if you kill also the parent folder.
so basically replace the contents with zeros then erase it? but that would be a kinda long process, killing each file in each dir i want.
What do you think Commercial security Software do? It basically the same thing, overwrite the physical file location with patterned value, sometimes two times over and it also takes time
There used to be an australian product called "ThunderByte" that basically opened the file and overwrote each byte with nulls. It did this a couple of times, then deleted the file. It was *apparently* unrecoverable, and you could set it to a particular folder, it would delete everything in that folder, then the folder itself.
Hi fellow hard drive destroyers :)
Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but filling a file with 0's and then deleting it wont necessarily make the contents of those files lost forever.
The location on your hard drive where those 0's are written is totally determined by the OS and "can" just as easily be written to a completely different sector of your hard drive altogether, and you might just be writing all those 0's to an empty part of your drive, and then the FAT gets updated to point to the new location.
Granted you would need to be pretty **** dedicated, patient, and know what you were looking for to try and find where those files were located (as the FAT is no longer pointing to them), but there is still "potential" for someone to be able to find the contents of your files in their original condition.
If you really really really wanted to guaruntee that no one could ever access those files ever again, you would need to use a process known as "washing". This would involve deleting the folders and files, and then creating a file filled with 0's that uses up the remaining space on your hard drive.
This is certainly not going to be a fast procedure (how long do you think it would take to fill up an 80 gig hard drive?) :) ... you could do bulk '0' dumping 64K at a time, but it would still take a while ... and unfortunately whoever was using the computer would probably know something was going on as Windows would warn about low disk space at some point too.
But, I guess it depends on how desperately you need to prevent access to those files.
Cheers,
Tinbum747
When someone comes and take your Hd to lok for data, usually he/she does not put your hd in a new hardware as the primary disk, but attach it as slave...Thus your program will not run at all, as the Os is on another disk where your program does not trig...
It would be easyer to attach a small bomb inside Pc, so that if soenoe try to open, your bomb explodes...
:p
Its ironic the fact that Windows makes harder to ...delete data on disk, and even harder to recover them when you want it for real!
I've bought once a great commercial program for making virtual disks and use them like normal physical hard drives in windows' explorer, this program is called "Strongdisk", http://www.phystechsoft.com/
It builds a whole hard drive into an image file, if you delete it you are a person going for suicide, thousands encrypted files and folders may be lost in one single click.
I am posting this info here cause this app includes a great command-line utility, named BURNER.EXE, you just passing it a file or folder and it wipes it completely and in full secure process.
Its algorithm for wiping data is totally strong, you can see it by shutting down the system using another utility of the product, called "safe shutdown", which it wipes all the windows' temporary files like swap file, making them protected from intruders.
I cant attach it here cause its copyrighted, but visit the above link for more info. Or search the web for a freeware version of it.
Nice software.
:cool:
Question,
I was not aware Windows will use new sectors.
It's very unlikely.
When you use CreateFile and read and write parts of the file, no new sectors should be used.
Therefore the rewrite should be very safe.
Norton wipeinfo does a similar job.
It also supports multiple writes since the manufacturer can (sometimes) read up to 8 writes(!)
That's what i heard anyway, it's a magnetic thing.
If your data are so critical and secret, I would recommend to use some kind of disk encryption before anything else so that someone who get access to your files won't be able to read the real stuff without you keyphrase.
-----
Heulsay
Quote:
Originally posted by Cimperiali
When someone comes and take your Hd to lok for data, usually he/she does not put your hd in a new hardware as the primary disk, but attach it as slave...Thus your program will not run at all, as the Os is on another disk where your program does not trig...
It would be easyer to attach a small bomb inside Pc, so that if soenoe try to open, your bomb explodes...
:p
eh, never thought about that... wonder how cops do it when they comfiscate a HD... (or actually i think they usually clone them. that's what i saw on some tv show anyways.)
can anyone suggest encryption software?
actually, encryption wouldn't help. cause i need to be able to use these files without decrypting them all the time.
but anyways, as for overwriting the files, when you say writing 0s to the end of the file, do you mean like, opening the file, getting the length, then writing that many 0s to it and closing it?
like this:
On Error Resume Next
Dim iFileNumber As Integer
Dim i As Integer
iFileNumber = FreeFile
Open "C:\test.txt" For Output As #iFileNumber
Print #iFileNumber, String$(FileLen("C:\test.txt"), Chr$(0));
Close #iFileNumber
or is that totally wrong?
Sorry for the interruption but...
Simply, open the file for output will re-create the file and then finally delete the file. I think this will surely hard to recover the data or nothing can be revied at all..
But as the majority said that overwriting the file would be much safer..Code:hFile = FreeFile()
Open "c:\myConfi.txt" For Output As #hFile
Close #hFile
Kill "c:\myConfi.txt"
Goodluck!Code:hFile = FreeFile()
Open "c:\myConfi.txt" For Binary As #hFile
Put #hFile,, String$(LOF(hFile), vbNullChar)
Close #hFile
Kill "c:\myConfi.txt"
As many of us said, its safer to overwrite first the file before deleting it.
Tinbum747 said that the OS may select another physical location for the empty data (zeroes), and then replace the pointers in FAT. This is understandable specially if we replacing a file with data of a different size than the original and OS determines that the original location not matches at all the data length. So the real file even without header can still stay there.
Another member said that Windows is not that "smart" or better is a bit lazy to do such a thing. So it may still use the same physical disk area to overwrite the contents.
Thread1 uses a single PUT sending a large amount of data in one single method call to the file. This is possible to confirm what Tinbum747 says, I dont recall what PUT really does and behaves (disk area reservation, FAT handling, etc).
In pure logic, if you open a file for binary, select a specific byte and replace it with one PUT method and close it, will NOT use another physical disk area. So by using many PUTs (sending 1-byte or to not be that slow small packets) maybe its safer to confuse the OS to not use other location. Just an idea for bringing closely the "wiping" thing.
Well for encryption, if I remember correctly, you can have some sort of os level encryption system for your files, so any software / access to files is done as usual. I also think that you can do that with some windows professional (2000 and XP and maybe nt) over a ntfs filesystem.
ok, thanks a lot guys. i'll use that code Thread1. i guess put the directory's contents in an array and loop through each file.
I have found this at SysInternals. It's C-code, but maybe this could help you.
SDelete: Securely overwrite your sensitive files ...
This may be usefull anyway:
http://www.cybertrails.com/~fys/wipeit.htm
This is certainly an interesting topic. I think opening a file for Binary Access Write and writting in zero's, then deleting like Thread1 suggested is a good way, especially for hidding data from the typical user. However, close inspection might still reveal filenames, or parts thereof, so I would suggest renaming the file to some random string before deleting it. That should further hide the data, if any is actually left at all, IMHO.
Again, as has been pointed out, connecting the drive as a slave, or booting to a command prompt would prevent your program from running, so the files would be accessable. If I really wanted to keep data from others, I would put it on floppy, SuperDisc, memory stick, CDRW, or other removable media.
Just how many people have access to your system anyway? If it's your own system, just don't let others use it. If it's not your system, you shouldn't be keeping super-sensitive data on it anyway.
only the way destroy whole data from the HDD. get a hammer. and hit with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdavide
Even that is not guaranteed to destroy all data on all parts of the hard drive... ;)
Brad!
reviving a three year old thread just for that jdavide?...
Ha - suddenly it becomes clear why people are talking about FAT!Quote:
reviving a three year old thread just for that jdavide?...
and this I can do for you, which is the only known solutionQuote:
Originally Posted by Cimperiali
How about a huge electromagnet :).
The only guaranteed method to get rid of the data on your Hard Disk forever is to demagnetize the Hard Disk.
Make/buy a demagnetization device and attach it to your hard disk and then make a program that triggers the device when a certain condition is satisfied.