Too true. A friend accidentally deleted his term paper. He called me in panic, I told him to not touch anything and went to his place. I tried to save his paper that got deleted maybe two hours ago and it was gone, while I could find old pictures on his HD that were years old. I guess this was a case of really bad luck, since his Windows 10 was downloading an update at this time, but still. But then again, he kind of deserved it, since he always laughed at my attempts of teaching him about the importance of backups.
I think redkey does it much better because it is a separate boot drive which means it does not need to avoid some key system files on the other drive (that may be needed to keep the windows wiper running).
Or ending up softlocking the system entirely because you delete the program that deletes other files. This tends to happen fairly easily when you do a simple "rm -rf /", which works on Windows and Linux.
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue usb-key - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red usb-key - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
Forensic Data Analyst here: One pass wipe is all that is needed with todays drives. The old MFM drives with fixed ball detent located tracks needed multiple wipes to ensure the margins of each track were fully cleaned. This wasn't a huge issue as the drives back then were pretty small so multiple passes, even on painfully slow hardware didn't take a horrifically long time to wipe.
@@vrajeshpc it's hard to get a magnet powerfully enough as a consumer. Hard drives still work even after a magnet capable of lifting dozens of kilos is attached to the hard drive. You might kill it when using it while it's running, but you will be able to read the Data
It should not be that difficult, since several discs will be dressed simultaneously. the erasure will take as long as it takes the largest disk to be vital, let's say 6hs for 8TB as it took 1.5hs for 2TB. the erase is simultaneous non-sequential for the disk set.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue key-the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red key-you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
@Ed Bedhead hahaha enjoy ur dusty ass pc's losers. nylon filters block all dust bud, and the positive pressure makes 0 dust able to get in through any crack or crevice
frankly one should rather make a tool that just goes secure erase on SSDs because that is probably faster AND saves livetime compared to overwriting it.
@@Stickywulf1 You can encrypt your hard drive and just toss it without wiping it if you ever want to get rid of it. It takes 0 seconds to securely wipe the drive.
@@EpicB yeah but i wouldnt trust them say if u dont wipe your drive alot of info u probably dont want other to have social security numbers credit card numbers etc
This is actually very useful having worked IT in the public sector. Wiping drives ESPECIALLY classified drives is a ridiculous processing. If this red key could find its way into DoD IT departments as an official wipe method it would sell like crazy.
@@InsufferableCrap There indeed is not any reason for software wiping if you do not want to retain the drive afterward. Household items like hammers and screwdrivers can easily surpass military-grade solutions!
I work for an IT company that handles a lot of banking stuff. We don't wipe our drives. Instead We just crush them until they are like Sand. Cant go wrong with that.
He did. The data is fully destroyed, meaning the drives could be reused for non-critical storage, or sold secondhand for marginal roi, decreasing waste, and increasing revenue, however slightly.
i am so glad i looked into it and found out how to stop the free upgrade to win10 on my parents pc. that has win media centre and 100s of hrs of recorded tv......because they lied, win10 did not support win media centre files
@@nekomancer9157 I didn't upgrade my Win10 either. Because it would break all programs I had installed on a several years old computer. IT was simply not worth it.
Minor nitpick: file indexes are not stored into the MBR or GPT, as those list the various partitions on the drive. File indexes are stored in different ways for different File Systems, like NTFS or BtrFS or HFS+ or APFS
On a NTFS partition it is stored on the $MFT (Master file table) which keeps track of the files and where they are stored. ON an FAT system they are stored in the Directory entries.
Gurben92 NTFS has most filenames in at least two places: $MFT and the directory index. Then there's the journal, recovery etc. But yeah I stopped watching when he opened by getting basic stuff wrong that anyone needs to know just to fix mistakes or upgrade hard drives.
The .flv files you see after the recovery is just the recovery tool being fooled by random sequence of bytes that by chance match the flv header information
Matěj Šrámek Everyone around here has no problem bowing to our corporate overlords and doesn’t realize this channel is one giant ad. Glad I’m not the only one.
@@themonroe654hd6 By that logic any good review for any product is an advertisement, which can be true sometimes but is disingenuous to say it always is. Don't watch the channel and then come here to bitch if you don't like it.
this is how you wipe a pc in 1 min, all you need is: 1. Microfiber cloth 2. A drive Grab cloth and the drive, move your hand in a circular motion while pushing the cloth onto the drive. You’ve done it! Good job!
same thing i said..maybe he selected the wrong option...as usual no idea what the fuck he is doing...just wasted time reviewing a video of his which is complete garbage and a waste of everyones time. Please they need to get someone else to do these things and be prepared in the future jesus...what an ignoramus.
@@jamesw71 Agreed James. The presenter guy is the only reason I don't normally watch this channel. A good IT guy shows his/her brilliance through their work alone. This guy is just annoying!
I think smashing the HDD with a hammer a few times and then throw it in the microwave until it sparks is more sufficient in that situation and should only take one minute.
@@Eremon1 your key could just be derived from a passcode you enter or something, i mean yeah in theroy* they could have a keylogger in IME and send it over to intel on the internet and shit but then ime has to implement a full network stack and send stuff out, which you could eaislly detect them doing >_< . (also IME does not know your wifi password, but it could theretically steal it from whatever os ur usign (or even use that OS'es network feaures to send shit over) but i mean really??
Hammers don't effectively destroy HDDs, data is still recoverable. The easiest way is to drill a number of holes through it or throw the disk itself in the wood chipper.
@@JoeyLindsay Very difficultly, a lot of data would be lost, and it would be difficult to find someone to agree to try to recover it. But, theoretically.
@@ThatKidinAfrica A HDD disk stores information magnetically, which fire does not generally interfere with. You'd need a very high temperature to melt the materials.
Linus, even in 1990 there were special forensic drive heads that could be positioned in 3 dimensions, because as a drive heats up or shifts from small mechanical changes, the data tracks will also shift, both in depth from the media surface, and exact orbital position (radius). So the serious recovery labs (Polaroid had one) could extract data even after it had been wiped and overwritten, by looking in three dimensions for remnants of data. Often 100% successfully. That's why DIY may be good enough for donating a computer, but isn't good enough for military standards.
@@tornad8063 it doesn't need to be too strong of an electromagnet, a d battery, wire, and a nail is good enough, but even then someone could recover bits of data. If you really want to make it impossible for people to scrape data, run the electromagnet, disassemble the enclosure, and put the platters through a shredder
@@tornad8063 if you were in a last second need to destroy files off of a drive, the best way is to just physically destroy the drive and scatter the remnants. If it’s one thing I learned from spooks while I was in the military, it’s that data is almost always salvageable if the drive still functions. Better safe than sorry, if you were in those extreme conditions I mean.
0:40 You're right on the important part (the data is still there) but you made a slight factual error: the entry that gets deleted isn't in the partition table. It's in the file system, which is separate from the MBR or GPT. What you're saying is true if you're deleting a partition, however. (As in deleting the partition itself, not just formatting it.)
@@Amperrs i hope this is sarcasm :D if some of the data in a raid is missing like a hard disk failiure or data curruption then it would be physicly impossible to recover any data due to the data being spread over multiple drives. it would be like trying to solve A+_=_ where A is data that you have on the drives, _ is the lost data. you physicly dont have the data to rebuild the drives. This is where parity is used for raid arrays that stores the outcome so that it could. to use the example A+_=C where C is the parity that you use to calculate the lost data. luckily for LTT it was a raid card faliure so yes they were able to rebuild the array becuase there was no data lost. :D
@@anonymousfan6677 on chromebooks all data is encrypted so even when someone could recover the data, as long as they can't break the encryption, they can't do anything with the data
Better to just encrypt the drive of your computer drive when you first buy it. That way, all data written to the drive from that time forward is encrypted. Once you want to give away the computer, drive, just reformat and the encrypted information is essentially irretrievable.
What about data recovery from corrupt filesystems, etc. This is not an uncommon occurence especially when its windows' time of the month. Are there free, good recovery tools supporting encrypted filesystems? This is the only thing stoppung me tbh.
@N3dR Back your data up. Don't rely on trying to recover it after the fact, especially with modern SSDs that add even more layers of abstraction between the physical storage and your data as well as regularly running TRIM in the background. You're better off assuming all data on a borked drive is lost as far as normal recovery goes. Even if it can be recovered it is often prohibitively expensive to hire a company to attempt recovery.
Jeff , there are some companies that wipe drives for auditing purposes (or down right destroys them with a drill press) that being said i'm curious if the red key offers a certificate of data removal or if it's similar to DBAN .
I would pay for a program that instead of deleting everything like that red key, it just overwrites videos of Rick Astley - Never gonna give you up, and deletes them. So when someone tries to recover the drive, they just get Rick Rolled over and over untill the end of time
The blue key is to make backups of what you want to keep before you shred the system with the red one.. I have to say that it was pretty cool to get a freebie backup flash drive. I've never seen shredder software to come with any sort or methods and not even directions how to use any simple methods such as dvd-r disc for the non-tech-savvy type.
@Brad Allen It won't result in readable data, but it will result in places in the drive that look like data, but aren't. As they said, it was detected as a file type which wasn't even on the drive to begin with
@@Anonymous-ze5sl wow, respect, that'd be too annoying with all the smoke and ash, I always keep my volcanoes in the backyard in a cage and only let them out for barbeques
@bacon banana The microwave will damage some of the data, but not all. It used to be that some companies would use a degausser, but it was found that the magnetic plates in hard drives could still contain some of the previous data. Hammer is good. A drill through all the drive plates is faster, safer, and just as effective because it cracks the plates, making data recovery impossible without a time machine.
Even physically destroyed disks can be recovered, there are peoples who destroyed disk with hammer and nail it, and it was recovered, most of the data. So, its not enough breaking it apart. Damaging electronic with microwave doesnt killing the plates that contains data, but chips, controllers, etc. Fire can damage plates, but sometime it doesnt. Since disk drives are plated for storing magnetic waves (like if there is a positive wave, it represents 1, and if its flat, means 0), and since each sector got this waves in the waves of the waves, such as water drop that create lots of waves (because one sector in a lifetime was changed many times), remembering all informations it ever had, putting you in position to recover eg. 10TB of data from a 1TB drive, but because it needs time for digging and combining deeper data, doing multiple wipe cycles will increase depth level, slowing deeper recovery and making more possibilities of reconstruction the data is useful. But still, data exists. And since its based on storing a magnetic waves, its best to bring monster magnet and deform all this waves (data) of all sectors to some random spikes and shapes that make no sense. However, because magnet will do it extremely, pulling hell of a plates, crossing its sectors fields between, plates wont be useful, and head wont be able to read or write any data on it, because it would be like driving over the forest, trying to find the road that make sense or to make one with flat sliding head.
One time I killed an ssd by using a modular power supply cable from a Corsair power supply plugged in to a thermaltake power supply. The smoke coming out of the drive usually indicates the data is destroyed. Very quick I would recommend
@Laith Rafid Actually it's still possible to recover the data. Depending on who is doing the recovery, it's possible they have the ability to look at the individual bits of data and recover it that way.
@Laith Rafid Nope, pop off the AVS transistor that usually gets used as a cheap fuse on most HDD logic boards and your "dead" over-volted HDD should be readable again. Hell, your logic board can be burned toast, but as long as the EEPROM chip containing your HDD partition geometry is OK, you can transfer it to a new logic board of the same model as your HDD and the "dead" HDD will be readable again.
@@shippo72 Unfortunately most consumers don't really think much further than Genius Bar level of service... Dead battery? gonna need to buy a whole new computer!
it might still be recoverable at least by professionals, so if you really are in the focus of the NSA or something you better use a sledgehammer and smash it into pieces.
11:30 This is how a CEO makes sure everyone has their data cloud backed up properly. "WE ARE DELETING SOMEONE'S PC RANDOMLY TO TEST FAULT TOLERANCE IN THE OFFICE."
+Linus Tech Tips When you delete a file, it's not the GPT/MBR partition table that removes the entry. Those store partition boundaries only. When you delete a file, it's the filesystem (NTFS or FAT32 on Windows, EXT4 or Btrfs on modern GNU/Linux, APFS or HFS+ on MacOS) that removes the stored entry. When you delete an entire partition on your disk, then the GPT/MBR removes the entry for that partition.
I kind of doubt this tool uses the optional commands to tell the SSD to erase the extra blocks it has for when it has to mark blocks as bad - so you can’t actually be sure the data is gone nor would normal recovery software be able to see that. A professional service who can electrically connect the NAND chips directly to their own controller (thereby bypassing the wear-balancing controller in the SATA/NVMe package) could recover those other blocks and find whatever just /happens/ to be there.
yea, UNfortunately what they must've meant is that it takes only 2 minutes OF YOUR TIME, cuz they only spent a couple minutes, if that, to get it started. SUPER lame -_-
Windows actually supports this for several years now. All you need to do is right-click the drive, select Format, DE-SELECT quick formatting (quick formatting just frees space, doesn't delete data) and then start formatting. Note you need to do this 3-5 times in order to make sure the data is gone beyond any reasonable recovery.
@Linus Tech Tips Just wanted you to know, there is someone called CareyHoltzman who has claimed that you guys have made 7 copyright claims on his videos. Many people have thought that it was the TH-cam copyright system going amuck, and if that is the case, you should know and try to help this poor guy out. Just wanted to help. Good Luck. (I know that it is cliche, but could you upvote so they can see this. Thanks.)
TH-cam changed the content ID algorithm sensitivity. Literally Linus is getting claims on his own channel from his other channels (tech quickie infringed on LTT, etc)
u can use any linux distro on usb stick and run "dd" program, that copies anything from a to b, and choose hard disk as destination and /dev/zero or /dev/random or /dev/urandom as source. Also on SSD auto trim wipes any deleted data by default
@@TorutheRedFox The MBR only contains the partition table on the old scheme, and even then it doesn't store any data about files. The partition-table in the MBR is for the BIOS, it doesn't give a flying about files
@@TorutheRedFox It doesn't. It stores code for the bootloader and 4 partition entries. Some other versions of the MBR store additional data, but that data is for the bootloader or specific firmware to use. 512 bytes isn't enough to store a file system.
Je is wrong at 0:38. MBR or GPT has nothing to do regarding the files. That is file system business. The MBR and GPT holds the information on how the logical partitions, containing file systems, are organized on that medium.
@Galaxy TS2 No it does not. Data and even partition recovery is QUITE possible with SSDs and provided by pretty much EVERY recovery software out there. Though they are very random in where they write files (cause anti-wear and such) most software can still ask the controller to give raw data and reconstruct out of it. If anything they tend to be far more annoying to properly fully erase hence you have manufacturers providing tools to do so included. Is also why if the SSD is to store sensitive data it is a common option to turn the SDD into a Self-Encrypting-Disc. Which would block recovery attempts without the right key.
+1 if we aren't including any form of LVM Also, assuming you mean partitions since logical partitons are described by EBR(s) on the physical partition (When using MBR).
@@Foxhood There's an ATA command to secure erase SSDs. You won't recover files after using said command...just like you won't recover files once TRIM has run.
the entry of the file does NOT live in MBR or GPT (partition table does), so when Linus said when a file was deleted, the entry of the file was deleted from MBR or GPT, was in fact completely wrong
"The entry in the MBR or the GPT gets deleted" Wtf neither the MBR nor the GPT store file entries. They just store partition entries. The file entries are stored on the filesystems that reside in the partitions defined in the MBR/GPT.
Yeah, I knew Linus wasn't the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to technology but it was still kinda shocking to hear him say those words. And nobody caught it in post either. Wow.
@@brendanpelle2566 Well, your experience is obviously pretty bad, because deleting the MBR can be easily rewritten with a new MBR and the filesystem will be intact. Even Windows has a "repair" mode that will restore the MBR for you.
@@movement2contact I see what you mean. "good enough" is so often used in irony. Imeant "sufficient". English is my 3rd language so I may sound goofy sometimes ;)
boot from linux usb drive, then "blkdiscard /dev/sda" or any other SSD, will send a trim command to the entire device, telling the SSD to kill it all...
@@wumbology8421 True, but you would need to get out the soldering iron to get anything, and most it will already be gone, but more importantly, writing random data to an SSD is pointless, wastes drive life, and takes way too long for what it does... If you really want to take a long time you can also just do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G" to actually write 0's to the SSD, but the drive itself is doing that already on its own in the background when you run a blkdiscard... The random writes only makes sense to HDD, and even then I am told they are still able to get stuff from the drive unless you go through the nightmare of something like 20 passes to guarantee it is dead... And even then, they are still getting better all the time, and 20 passes may still not be good enough... Bottom line, if it is really that important that no one get the stuff off the drive, just burn it to a cinder, otherwise blkdiscard takes seconds and does a good job for SSD, and "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G" works pretty well on a HDD...
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G on an SSD might not kill all the data due to wear leveling. Basically, an SSD can decide on its own where it puts the data and might create copies of the data internally without you knowing. The dd will only overwrite the last copy while the proper ATA command should kill all. For newer SSDs it is even better as they all use encryption internally and will only overwrite the encryption key to delete all data
@@hawkanonymous2610 true, even drives that don't have TRIM will garbage collect though, and will add pages to have 0's written to them to get them ready to be written to though, so any data that the over-provisioning didn't let you touch should still soon be blank... again if it is that important, just burn the drive to a cinder
File entry in the *MBR,* on in the *GPT* ??!! Riiiiight... why use the FAT table, or the MFT on NTSF drives, when you can just place your file entries *right* *in* *the* *Master* *Boot* *Record* next to all the partitions? Its in the name, they are *Partition* tables, they do *not* store file entries! Dear Lord, Linus how could you read that script with a straight face??!!
I might try one of these. It's annoying what my PC gets dusty, so having this be able to wipe in in just 2 minutes sounds great! As a matter of fact, I just am going to order one right now!
No. Their real skill is taking broken drives and using parts from working drives to get the data back. As for software data recovery there's not a huge difference between them. They're just scanning for existing files that aren't yet over written.
@@patbrown5833 That is only true for non magnetic media and you should still use random on those. If somone is realy desperrate to get your data you can get them still back from the leftover magnetic fields in lower layers of the disk or reconstruct from the wear of chips. But you should feel save unless CEO(big company), Politician or a terrorist.
You can buy a thumb drive and put dban on it for less than the cost of a redkey, dban works for SSDs. There is a secure erase command in most SATA firmwares which is faster.
Previous month I managed to gather my first five figure wage ever!!! I've been working for this provider online for 2 yrs now and I never been happier... They are paying me $95 per hour, and the most important thing about it is the fact that I am not really that tech-savvy, they just asked for standard idea of internet and plain typing skill...Great thing about this gig is that I have more time with my family. I am in a position to spend quality time with my relatives and buddies and look after my babies and also going on holiday vacation with them very frequently. Don't let pass this chance and try to react fast. Let me show you what I do... *amazing73.com*
0:53 Sry Linus, but the file entry is not saved in the GPT or MBR. This two data structures describe partion of a harddrive. The place where the file entry is saved depends on the file system. On Windows most common file systems are FAT and NTFS. In FAT the file entry is saved in the File Allocation Table (short FAT) and in NTFS in the Master File Table (MFT) Greedings from Saxony/Germany
I HOPE someone told Linus that the "zero data" is likely the least secure option. by definition, zero data means to just write all zeros to drive. a drive that then is scanned using extra sensitive equipment could see that the drive is "all zeros" but some of those "zeros" is more to zero than others. if new drive receives a file and then is zeroed the bits "closest" to ones could be assumed to be ones while the rest is assumed to be zeros very likely then would recreate the deleted file. even a file that was on erased data could be reconstructed. whole volumes have been written on the rewrite process but suffice to say, random algorithms that does multiple passes (7 vs 31 passes, more is better) is way to go.
For someone that is donating/selling their drive to another person and doesn't really need to worry about hiding government secrets, zeroing out is good enough. This is a guide for the average Joe, not secret agents
Zeroing still won't allow software based recoveries. If you're hiding from intelligence agencies, then sure, a zero pass maybe isn't enough. Even then, there's not a lot of information out there on how recoverable a zero pass is even by intelligence agencies.
For SSDs, Linux live cd, run blkdiscard. Trims the entire drive, no data can be found and is as instant as you're going to get. SSD with TRIM support enabled in the OS will also just delete the data pretty fast in most cases... For regular harddrives, well I use linux's dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ method, simple and free, and can be used with any random USB drive
@@namAehT You're thinking /dev/random, which depletes the entropy pool generated by input devices and therefore can block any process dependent on its output. In contrast, /dev/urandom provide continuous output by reusing the entropy pool, but at the cost of not generating "high-quality randomness" (although for this use-case this is completely unnecessary). Either way, imo /dev/zero would still be the less hardware intensive and more straightforward pool to simply format. Randomness is only necessary if you want to give the illusion of recoverable data still present.
@@robinc.5077 OK, actually recoverable by data recovery companies and just being able to dump the drive and just see a bunch of zeroes is a different use case. I haven't come across an SSD that does not just completely wipe with TRIM (samsungs leave some random things behind but not any files I had on it before). So depends. If it's a drive you're selling it's probably fine. If you're a government spy, an actual overwrite might be better. Just check the result of trimming the entire drive with hexdump or something :)
@@asmodin88 really? Care to reference any sort of evidence? Because as someone who needs to keep apprised of security issues for my day job I can only think of one study that challenged the implementation of FDE implementations on SSDs www.ru.nl/publish/pages/909275/draft-paper_1.pdf It was published late 2018 and it was a technique capable by academic researchers in laboratory conditions. The vulnerabilities identified were also patched by the affected manufacturers prior to the papers release. I've not seen nor heard of any capabilities by disk recovery labs of achieving the same either prior or since the papers release but I welcome any evidence you can provide to the contrary.
@@lmaoroflcopter the paper you linked is what I read/heard about. Back then I think I read that some of the issues are actually structural and can't just be fixed with a firmware update, but I have no idea of that is true or not. I always just thought that having your encryption key saved physically somewhere within the hardware itself seemed like a dumb idea, which is only implemented for convenience, marketing and speed reasons.
I've accidentally put this key into the door lock of my house. Now I can't find my family anywhere...
That is some pure, nerdy, Stephen Wright comedy right there.
Uh oh
Huh, what family? Are you sure you're not just misrenembering?
F
I can’t find my house!
Data is only gone forever when you didn’t want it to be gone.
or if you throw it in magma.
Lol, nice one!
Too true. A friend accidentally deleted his term paper. He called me in panic, I told him to not touch anything and went to his place. I tried to save his paper that got deleted maybe two hours ago and it was gone, while I could find old pictures on his HD that were years old.
I guess this was a case of really bad luck, since his Windows 10 was downloading an update at this time, but still. But then again, he kind of deserved it, since he always laughed at my attempts of teaching him about the importance of backups.
Nothing left to say after that.
@@Furzkampfbomber
Hopefully he was able to rewrite it and get it done
or just use seagate drives, they wipe themselves after a short time.
xD
lolmao XD
Xd
it's a feature, not a bug!
Seagate? More like Toshiba
I think redkey does it much better because it is a separate boot drive which means it does not need to avoid some key system files on the other drive (that may be needed to keep the windows wiper running).
Or ending up softlocking the system entirely because you delete the program that deletes other files.
This tends to happen fairly easily when you do a simple "rm -rf /", which works on Windows and Linux.
Timer: *Ominously Counting Down*
Linus: _Pulls out manual_
Anxiety: *Intensifies*
oh my god correct
yeah that part is giving me anxiety XD
Hotel: trivago
@@LoLingVo your parents are gone you can curse
Every movie be like
I just wipe my PC with a damp cloth
FBI OPEN UP
#Hillary
I bleach it, Just like Hilary Clinton
FUCK. You beat me by ONE HOUR.
I got to get all the wankstains off
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
You take the blue usb-key - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red usb-key - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
I was thinking about the Matrix too...
@@ganswijk this guy goes deeper to the movie alice
in wonderland the amtrixx is a joke for this dude
Oh my god
Brilliant
Stop listening to the Mainstream Media. Get Red usb-keyed bro!
Forensic Data Analyst here: One pass wipe is all that is needed with todays drives. The old MFM drives with fixed ball detent located tracks needed multiple wipes to ensure the margins of each track were fully cleaned. This wasn't a huge issue as the drives back then were pretty small so multiple passes, even on painfully slow hardware didn't take a horrifically long time to wipe.
Do you recommend the red key USB method or simple Windows Reset and remove files option? Is either one recoverable?
I have an Acer Aspire A515 I need to clear the driver, I cnt open any programs or apps nor pc reset. What's the best method?
"Wipe Any PC in 2 Minutes"
Reality: Takes hours.
@Anoneemus Noename Advertising in a nutshell
if you want to wipe your disk on 2 minutes... put it on the microwave.....
@@Sebastian-cn8lh Just put your hdd on a super powerful magnet and in case of ssd just break the nand flash
Hammer is safes way to destroy data ask Hillary c
@@vrajeshpc it's hard to get a magnet powerfully enough as a consumer. Hard drives still work even after a magnet capable of lifting dozens of kilos is attached to the hard drive.
You might kill it when using it while it's running, but you will be able to read the Data
Says the computer wiper USB is unnecessary and then advertise about aluminum coated crystalline RGB RAM sticks :D
More RBG means more power tho
advertises*
Yea, he definitely should have shown the gold sticks. Those ones are worth it
Why tho rgb ram sticks
@@smikkelbeerbiedo217 cause fun
Linus doesn’t need that red key usb
He wipes computers easily enough by dropping ‘em
*mic drop*
Love it
HA, but SSD fortunatelly is Linus proof
@@timojissink4715 *Linus lols while droping ssd in water*
Map Crafter he could just submerge it into isopropyl and let it dry
Employee: What's this?
*Deletes 1Pb of storage*
Employee: Well, crap.
Don't leave loaded weapons lying around then...
I would attempt necc rope if that hapens
It should not be that difficult, since several discs will be dressed simultaneously. the erasure will take as long as it takes the largest disk to be vital, let's say 6hs for 8TB as it took 1.5hs for 2TB. the erase is simultaneous non-sequential for the disk set.
9007199254740992
Ever hear of a trojan called Arcticbomb? It only works on Windows 9x but it would be fun if that one was still around.
With the red key you can start fresh...
But with the blue key, you can continue with 16 gigs and be happy.
LOL
what would Neo do tho?
@@Mrbeat-88 lemme find out ill follow that key all day (i bet most folks woken went literally insane haha)
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue key-the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red key-you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.
David Patmel this comment is underrated.. :(
The thumbnail looks like Linus took a pregnancy test and tested positive...
So underrated 🤣
Yeah
HE'S A GAE BOI!
@GrassFedMeats
That doesn’t make sense, some people aren’t meant to be parents because you know... *a b u s e*
I have perform a mild giggle
when your parents say that they need to have a serious talk
hmmmmmmmmmm
@@maxgames. nice profile pic
@@rpxt what about my pfp
100% true lol
these pfps....
"That's seems unnecessary.... AAAAND HERE ARE SOME RGB COLORED RAM STICKS!!!"
that are also unnecesary
@@pankoza That's the joke
@@lukebell4738 i know and i got the joke
@@CakePrincessCelestia Press F to pay respects
@@pankoza r/wooosh
"this really cool crystalline structure on the top that allows...." it to collect even more dust.
positive air pressure and fan filters. i havnt had ANY dust in my pc in 1 year, and i live in a dusty ass definitely-not-sanitary home
@@bmxscape thats a lie
@@relgames6080 are you dumb? you literally filter the air going in your pc, how is it complicated to you?
@@bmxscape nice lie
@Ed Bedhead hahaha enjoy ur dusty ass pc's losers. nylon filters block all dust bud, and the positive pressure makes 0 dust able to get in through any crack or crevice
"Wipe Any PC in 2 Minutes"
*Time remaining: 2 hours*
frankly one should rather make a tool that just goes secure erase on SSDs because that is probably faster AND saves livetime compared to overwriting it.
wtfitsaduck ._. yeaaaaaaa.... It's a little clickbait but it's also true. It only takes like 2 min to boot to the key.
I got fooled. Only watched the video because I thought there was a fast way to securely wipe a drive
@@Stickywulf1 You can encrypt your hard drive and just toss it without wiping it if you ever want to get rid of it. It takes 0 seconds to securely wipe the drive.
@@Eremon1 that's the recovery time u bag of hard marshmallows
The voice crack after saying he can’t grow a beard was ironic asf 😂
It's funny, because he did grow the beard
And now it's relevant again
the perfect use for this USB is in my school's server
@@soakkey9317 haha
@@soakkey9317 gun go pew pew
@@soakkey9317 and.... your on an FBI watchlist lol
all of these replies are r/cursedcomments
Yes yes yes yes yes, thank you for that idea
RedKey: Erases drive in 1 hour
Sledgehammer: I'm about to end this mans whole career
That would literally end a reviewer's career
**microwave
The London Drugs where I live does electronics recycling and apparently they take a hammer to any hard drives they take in.
@@EpicB yeah but i wouldnt trust them say if u dont wipe your drive alot of info u probably dont want other to have social security numbers credit card numbers etc
@@catmaniabyt Which is why you should erase the drive yourself before recycling it or giving it away.
Wipe any computer in 2 MINUTES, *Takes 2 hours*
linus logic....
7 hours...
Ten years
If you have the most powerful pc in 2045 it will take 2 minutes
click bait
This is actually very useful having worked IT in the public sector. Wiping drives ESPECIALLY classified drives is a ridiculous processing. If this red key could find its way into DoD IT departments as an official wipe method it would sell like crazy.
havent you/they using linux on work?
dd could handle it
Even if it did work, you would still have to physically break the drive for assurance
@@InsufferableCrap There indeed is not any reason for software wiping if you do not want to retain the drive afterward. Household items like hammers and screwdrivers can easily surpass military-grade solutions!
I work for an IT company that handles a lot of banking stuff. We don't wipe our drives. Instead We just crush them until they are like Sand. Cant go wrong with that.
What software do you use to wipe? Is it available to the public?
A relative working for a bank actually told me they had a physical hard disk shredder machine for old hard disks.
Beat that.
Disk shredders work pretty well.. though they are far more costly than wiping and reusing drives
In the USAF back in the late 80s we had to pull out platters and sand off the magnetic material. Granted it was TS SCI data.
He did. The data is fully destroyed, meaning the drives could be reused for non-critical storage, or sold secondhand for marginal roi, decreasing waste, and increasing revenue, however slightly.
@@michaelhearn7302 in the words of Frank Lucas MY MAN
nuclear missile :D
Wipe any pc in 2 minutes.
Turns on Windows 10 update.....
That oughta do it.
i am so glad i looked into it and found out how to stop the free upgrade to win10 on my parents pc. that has win media centre and 100s of hrs of recorded tv......because they lied, win10 did not support win media centre files
@@nekomancer9157 I didn't upgrade my Win10 either. Because it would break all programs I had installed on a several years old computer. IT was simply not worth it.
I was bummed when I found out the hard way, even VLC is fune, I miss what was taken from me😖😥
No need to buy tht stupid key
Windows 10 is a piece of fucking shit
period
Minor nitpick: file indexes are not stored into the MBR or GPT, as those list the various partitions on the drive. File indexes are stored in different ways for different File Systems, like NTFS or BtrFS or HFS+ or APFS
On a NTFS partition it is stored on the $MFT (Master file table) which keeps track of the files and where they are stored. ON an FAT system they are stored in the Directory entries.
Gurben92 NTFS has most filenames in at least two places: $MFT and the directory index. Then there's the journal, recovery etc. But yeah I stopped watching when he opened by getting basic stuff wrong that anyone needs to know just to fix mistakes or upgrade hard drives.
John Francis Doe ya know, the basic things that _every_ consumer knows off the top of their head
The .flv files you see after the recovery is just the recovery tool being fooled by random sequence of bytes that by chance match the flv header information
Makes sense
@Anunoriginaljoke timestamp plz?
where is my data?
redkey: gone, reduced to ones and zeros
I used the key... to destroy the key
I’m sorry little key
Actually, Discord just shuffled the ones and zeros a bit to his likings :)
Isn't ones and zeros data?
Red key is inevitable
Linus: "And this videos is brought to you byyyyy..."
Me: *clicks the right arrow key 4 times*
Feels good man
Matěj Šrámek Everyone around here has no problem bowing to our corporate overlords and doesn’t realize this channel is one giant ad.
Glad I’m not the only one.
Or L 2 times
@@themonroe654hd6 Ah, yes, bring on communism! Fucking kids...
I do the same exact thing lol
@@themonroe654hd6 By that logic any good review for any product is an advertisement, which can be true sometimes but is disingenuous to say it always is. Don't watch the channel and then come here to bitch if you don't like it.
Just heat the drive to 2000 C°!!! The drive being liquid will indicate all the data are gone :D
And then you plug it back in, and somehow, *SOMEHOW*, one picture shows up melted and corrupted
You will be melted as well
The Brits used to shred their Top Secret HDs down to fine pieces of metal, then KEEP the shredded metal restricted...just in case.
Dad_a_Monk British security services still do.
just put it in a shredder lol
this is how you wipe a pc in 1 min, all you need is:
1. Microfiber cloth
2. A drive
Grab cloth and the drive, move your hand in a circular motion while pushing the cloth onto the drive.
You’ve done it! Good job!
"Wipe any PC in 2 Minutes!"
*Wiping takes 2 and a half hours*
Clickbait intensifies.
same thing i said..maybe he selected the wrong option...as usual no idea what the fuck he is doing...just wasted time reviewing a video of his which is complete garbage and a waste of everyones time. Please they need to get someone else to do these things and be prepared in the future jesus...what an ignoramus.
Could have been the tagline of the product
@@jamesw71 Agreed James. The presenter guy is the only reason I don't normally watch this channel. A good IT guy shows his/her brilliance through their work alone. This guy is just annoying!
@@jamesw71 ^
I love the fact that I live in a world now where ram has more lighting features than my damn house
Forget the damn house, my own AMOLED Samsung doesn't even come close
*FBI open up!*
Wait till I use dis redkey usb thing, just 7 hours.
*FBI: k*
I think smashing the HDD with a hammer a few times and then throw it in the microwave until it sparks is more sufficient in that situation and should only take one minute.
encrypt your hdd, and spent 0.0001ms wiping the encryption key.
@@Eremon1 your key could just be derived from a passcode you enter or something, i mean yeah in theroy* they could have a keylogger in IME and send it over to intel on the internet and shit but then ime has to implement a full network stack and send stuff out, which you could eaislly detect them doing >_< . (also IME does not know your wifi password, but it could theretically steal it from whatever os ur usign (or even use that OS'es network feaures to send shit over) but i mean really??
If you are in a hurry, you use a drill.
Pina wait. Where is the encryption key for bitlocker stored???
Linus @ 1:22 : "And also we'll probably be showing you guys a free way to do this."
Also Linus: **doesn't show us a free way to do this**
Wipe any pc in two minutes? Glances at hammer in tool box, "You underestimate me good sir"
Hammers don't effectively destroy HDDs, data is still recoverable. The easiest way is to drill a number of holes through it or throw the disk itself in the wood chipper.
@@sarahk236 theoretically, even that is still recoverable.
@@JoeyLindsay Very difficultly, a lot of data would be lost, and it would be difficult to find someone to agree to try to recover it. But, theoretically.
@@sarahk236 just disassemble it and microwave it (dont microwave like the outer layer of metal it's like a shield) c:
@@ThatKidinAfrica A HDD disk stores information magnetically, which fire does not generally interfere with. You'd need a very high temperature to melt the materials.
Linus, even in 1990 there were special forensic drive heads that could be positioned in 3 dimensions, because as a drive heats up or shifts from small mechanical changes, the data tracks will also shift, both in depth from the media surface, and exact orbital position (radius). So the serious recovery labs (Polaroid had one) could extract data even after it had been wiped and overwritten, by looking in three dimensions for remnants of data. Often 100% successfully.
That's why DIY may be good enough for donating a computer, but isn't good enough for military standards.
Interesting. It seems , that ot's more worth destroying drive and buying new one at this point. Or what about very strong elecrtomagnet (for hdd's)
@@tornad8063 it doesn't need to be too strong of an electromagnet, a d battery, wire, and a nail is good enough, but even then someone could recover bits of data. If you really want to make it impossible for people to scrape data, run the electromagnet, disassemble the enclosure, and put the platters through a shredder
Best way is to destroy it fysically. Maybe hammer to a child and ask what is inside of your drive and leave?
@@tornad8063 if you were in a last second need to destroy files off of a drive, the best way is to just physically destroy the drive and scatter the remnants. If it’s one thing I learned from spooks while I was in the military, it’s that data is almost always salvageable if the drive still functions. Better safe than sorry, if you were in those extreme conditions I mean.
I know I’m a bit late, but I think I saw a military standard on the red key when he was choosing the wipe method
When you reset your PC in windows, it removes your “personal files” but reinstalls windows... this the reason 100k files were found
Lol true
Actually, you’re wrong
Linus used Recuva which only finds deleted files Keyword: DELETED
It’s actually Windows’ fault
@@francoisdang those are files that were used to wipe the pc..
Not the full reset option.
The partial reset reinstalls windows.
wouldn't the red key delete those files
0:40 You're right on the important part (the data is still there) but you made a slight factual error: the entry that gets deleted isn't in the partition table. It's in the file system, which is separate from the MBR or GPT. What you're saying is true if you're deleting a partition, however. (As in deleting the partition itself, not just formatting it.)
that sentence made my ears hurt so much
Linus: When you delete data is really isn't gone
TH-cam recommend: All of our data is GONE!
I saw that too
In that video his raid array failed so it's a little different than having data on a single disk.
@@KB-TECH-PRO rebuild the raid and its back tho
@@Amperrs i hope this is sarcasm :D if some of the data in a raid is missing like a hard disk failiure or data curruption then it would be physicly impossible to recover any data due to the data being spread over multiple drives. it would be like trying to solve A+_=_ where A is data that you have on the drives, _ is the lost data. you physicly dont have the data to rebuild the drives. This is where parity is used for raid arrays that stores the outcome so that it could. to use the example A+_=C where C is the parity that you use to calculate the lost data. luckily for LTT it was a raid card faliure so yes they were able to rebuild the array becuase there was no data lost. :D
@@anonymousfan6677 on chromebooks all data is encrypted so even when someone could recover the data, as long as they can't break the encryption, they can't do anything with the data
Wait until some LMG employee plugs into the server...
It wont do anything unless it is booted off the "KEY"
@@warrobotstankers9554 that's true but you can still laugh at the joke
*7 weeks later...*
We don't need another incident of a former employee wiping an entire server.
*Sweats Nervously*
Download trojans and rename them: Bank info password list etc.. so when the FBI recovers those files they ave viruses instead
lmaoo
Hello fellow Paul
@@Sir. yes Pauls are the best!
@@paulnathanielsmith no, Geoffs are the best
@@vaishnav3735 lol
I literally got an ad for the red key when I clicked on the video that could not have been any more perfect
NAH THATS A LIE. YOU JUST WANT LIKES
I once did a Guttman Method (35 passes) on an old eMac. My manager got fed up after the thing had been running solidly for 7 days and pulled the plug!
lol....
I did it on a pair of laptops and it took a little over 24 hours.
What did you have on there man
@@domlee5902 he probably had some kiddy stuff if you know what i mean rofl
I'm genuinely worried about what you were trying to hide
Better to just encrypt the drive of your computer drive when you first buy it. That way, all data written to the drive from that time forward is encrypted. Once you want to give away the computer, drive, just reformat and the encrypted information is essentially irretrievable.
What about data recovery from corrupt filesystems, etc. This is not an uncommon occurence especially when its windows' time of the month.
Are there free, good recovery tools supporting encrypted filesystems? This is the only thing stoppung me tbh.
Encrypted drives are a good way to lose performance
@N3dR Back your data up. Don't rely on trying to recover it after the fact, especially with modern SSDs that add even more layers of abstraction between the physical storage and your data as well as regularly running TRIM in the background. You're better off assuming all data on a borked drive is lost as far as normal recovery goes. Even if it can be recovered it is often prohibitively expensive to hire a company to attempt recovery.
Joel Taggart Doesn’t seem to make a difference on my MacBook Pro
Jeff , there are some companies that wipe drives for auditing purposes (or down right destroys them with a drill press) that being said i'm curious if the red key offers a certificate of data removal or if it's similar to DBAN .
I would pay for a program that instead of deleting everything like that red key, it just overwrites videos of Rick Astley - Never gonna give you up, and deletes them. So when someone tries to recover the drive, they just get Rick Rolled over and over untill the end of time
That may very well be the best business plan ever made.
not to mention that there are free open source utilities that you can download
a Bash Bunny very likely could do this
Money is Money
Not even joking, I would honestly pay for it.
Linus bhai zindabaad !
Due to him I became able to format my whole SSD which wasn't allowed by windows.
I always being thankful to you.
The blue key is to make backups of what you want to keep before you shred the system with the red one.. I have to say that it was pretty cool to get a freebie backup flash drive.
I've never seen shredder software to come with any sort or methods and not even directions how to use any simple methods such as dvd-r disc for the non-tech-savvy type.
Thank you, I really needed this...for personal stuff...um
@rk 4391 no u
BTW, Eraser is good too (eraser.heidi.ie/)
Personal more like pornsonal
*FBI wants to know your location
@Hideika pu nepo IBF
1:34 i thought the video was brought by RAZER
That's pretty fast! How much FPS of your eyes? :)
SAME
I started thinking Razer made RAM
Yup, me too and checking his phone to see who the sponsor is? Segways be damned
RAZER MASTER RACE ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I've accidentally plugged this USB in my dog and now he doesn't poop anymore.
does that work on cats too?
worth a try.
Puts a RANDOM wipe pass, then finds radom files generated. Mindblown
@@bower95 Which in this case generated random ( and corrupt ) files. So seems legit.
Lol it just fills your drive with noise
@Brad Allen As explained, the system is just detecting random binary as actual data
🤯
@Brad Allen It won't result in readable data, but it will result in places in the drive that look like data, but aren't. As they said, it was detected as a file type which wasn't even on the drive to begin with
It's not a Linus Tech Tips video without rgb!
You mean LGBTQ
How could it be a Linus Tech Tips video *WITHOUT RGB!!!???*
But seriously, that bling on the RAM, come on is dust so overrated?
1:37
Taikamuna and drops
"Disclaimer: The only way to guarantee data removal is to physically destroy the disc." :D
Vulcano.
@bacon banana Yeah, right next to the mariana trench.
@@Anonymous-ze5sl wow, respect, that'd be too annoying with all the smoke and ash, I always keep my volcanoes in the backyard in a cage and only let them out for barbeques
@bacon banana The microwave will damage some of the data, but not all. It used to be that some companies would use a degausser, but it was found that the magnetic plates in hard drives could still contain some of the previous data. Hammer is good. A drill through all the drive plates is faster, safer, and just as effective because it cracks the plates, making data recovery impossible without a time machine.
Even physically destroyed disks can be recovered, there are peoples who destroyed disk with hammer and nail it, and it was recovered, most of the data. So, its not enough breaking it apart. Damaging electronic with microwave doesnt killing the plates that contains data, but chips, controllers, etc. Fire can damage plates, but sometime it doesnt. Since disk drives are plated for storing magnetic waves (like if there is a positive wave, it represents 1, and if its flat, means 0), and since each sector got this waves in the waves of the waves, such as water drop that create lots of waves (because one sector in a lifetime was changed many times), remembering all informations it ever had, putting you in position to recover eg. 10TB of data from a 1TB drive, but because it needs time for digging and combining deeper data, doing multiple wipe cycles will increase depth level, slowing deeper recovery and making more possibilities of reconstruction the data is useful. But still, data exists. And since its based on storing a magnetic waves, its best to bring monster magnet and deform all this waves (data) of all sectors to some random spikes and shapes that make no sense. However, because magnet will do it extremely, pulling hell of a plates, crossing its sectors fields between, plates wont be useful, and head wont be able to read or write any data on it, because it would be like driving over the forest, trying to find the road that make sense or to make one with flat sliding head.
Title: wipe any drive in 2 minutes!
actual product: this will take 2+ hours
More like two days!😂
Alternative: search for Minecraft free version and download it.
Lol
Thanks darth vader, very cool.
Darth Vader there is Mc cracked with cracked servers
Macintosh99 - fbi opn up
@@yo5942 use hgen for a account
One time I killed an ssd by using a modular power supply cable from a Corsair power supply plugged in to a thermaltake power supply. The smoke coming out of the drive usually indicates the data is destroyed. Very quick I would recommend
@Laith Rafid Actually it's still possible to recover the data.
Depending on who is doing the recovery, it's possible they have the ability to look at the individual bits of data and recover it that way.
@Laith Rafid Nope, pop off the AVS transistor that usually gets used as a cheap fuse on most HDD logic boards and your "dead" over-volted HDD should be readable again. Hell, your logic board can be burned toast, but as long as the EEPROM chip containing your HDD partition geometry is OK, you can transfer it to a new logic board of the same model as your HDD and the "dead" HDD will be readable again.
@@shippo72 Unfortunately most consumers don't really think much further than Genius Bar level of service...
Dead battery? gonna need to buy a whole new computer!
it might still be recoverable at least by professionals, so if you really are in the focus of the NSA or something you better use a sledgehammer and smash it into pieces.
The FBI wanted to know my location
11:30 This is how a CEO makes sure everyone has their data cloud backed up properly. "WE ARE DELETING SOMEONE'S PC RANDOMLY TO TEST FAULT TOLERANCE IN THE OFFICE."
how to wipe any pc in seconds... featuring THE HAMMER
*IRRETRIEVABLE*
Hydrochloric acid or bromine... A hammer is expensive. Rocks are cheap.
th-cam.com/video/-bpX8YvNg6Y/w-d-xo.html
Do it with your bare hands!!!
Software solutions are better.
+Linus Tech Tips When you delete a file, it's not the GPT/MBR partition table that removes the entry. Those store partition boundaries only. When you delete a file, it's the filesystem (NTFS or FAT32 on Windows, EXT4 or Btrfs on modern GNU/Linux, APFS or HFS+ on MacOS) that removes the stored entry. When you delete an entire partition on your disk, then the GPT/MBR removes the entry for that partition.
"What are you doing there?"
"Nothing, just arming a nuclear missile silo."
"O.K. Just tell me when you're done. Meal's ready."
Ah shittttt made my day, nice comment😅
im happy to report i love this comment and made the like count 69
your profile pic looks like a knock off of the logo for the nasa artemis mission
I kind of doubt this tool uses the optional commands to tell the SSD to erase the extra blocks it has for when it has to mark blocks as bad - so you can’t actually be sure the data is gone nor would normal recovery software be able to see that. A professional service who can electrically connect the NAND chips directly to their own controller (thereby bypassing the wear-balancing controller in the SATA/NVMe package) could recover those other blocks and find whatever just /happens/ to be there.
Wipes all disks detected, so it's a one use thing? 😂
duh
Something tells me that if this were the case, the kickstarter would have been a complete failure 😂
Write protect?
It don't delete itself :)
@@RedkeyUSB Then it lied!
Roses are red,
My screen is blue,
I think i deleted
System32
EDIT: OMG most likes i got in my life!
Ohhh lordy
You can’t delete System32
@Kurt Magbujos r/woooosh
@@kurtmagbujos you can on android
@@valentinagarrett8989 shUuUuuUUUUUut uPPppP BIiiIIIIIIiitCH
Delete computer in 2 min? Video 12 mins long.
yea, UNfortunately what they must've meant is that it takes only 2 minutes OF YOUR TIME, cuz they only spent a couple minutes, if that, to get it started. SUPER lame -_-
Microwave will be even quicker... 2 mins to take the hard drive out though
@@Anthony99 idea is to do it without destroying disk
How 2minutes if they said it was 2 hours
Windows actually supports this for several years now. All you need to do is right-click the drive, select Format, DE-SELECT quick formatting (quick formatting just frees space, doesn't delete data) and then start formatting.
Note you need to do this 3-5 times in order to make sure the data is gone beyond any reasonable recovery.
@Linus Tech Tips
Just wanted you to know, there is someone called CareyHoltzman who has claimed that you guys have made 7 copyright claims on his videos. Many people have thought that it was the TH-cam copyright system going amuck, and if that is the case, you should know and try to help this poor guy out. Just wanted to help. Good Luck. (I know that it is cliche, but could you upvote so they can see this. Thanks.)
Ok thanks, I’m not very educated in regards to the copyright system, and just wanted to help in any way that I could.
@@subtoeverything7798 well heres one thing to know thw copyright system is riged
One of Britec 09's videos has also been copyright claimed
TH-cam changed the content ID algorithm sensitivity. Literally Linus is getting claims on his own channel from his other channels (tech quickie infringed on LTT, etc)
@@requen Damn, then the Content ID system is totally fudged up. I mean Google can't write some code to pair up partner or subsidiary channels?
Stay tuned for part 2 of this video: ‘OOPS! I accidentally wiped out Petabyte Project.’
11:29 "Should we use it on James?" I genuinely thought you meant you wanted to erase his brain.
In Windows you can use
cipher /w:D:\
to overwrite any free space in a drive (the D: drive in this example)
u can use any linux distro on usb stick and run "dd" program, that copies anything from a to b, and choose hard disk as destination and /dev/zero or /dev/random or /dev/urandom as source.
Also on SSD auto trim wipes any deleted data by default
@@darvamehleran786 yeah but then you have to run Linux
@@rootytootyfreshnfruity9480 wot the problem to run it from usb stick? I use one to make or move copies/backups of harddrives
Is there a way I can connect that drive to my head??
Perfect for when you finish watching a really good Netflix series
You need an adapter and power supply but it should work if you have them
Vodka, lots and lots of vodka
Benzos.
I wish man.
The partition table does not hold the entries for the files -- that is part of the file system and the details depend on which one you use.
Yeah I'm kinda surprised they don't know that
the MBR is the partition table, yes
but it does store some data about files
@@TorutheRedFox The MBR only contains the partition table on the old scheme, and even then it doesn't store any data about files. The partition-table in the MBR is for the BIOS, it doesn't give a flying about files
@@TorutheRedFox It doesn't. It stores code for the bootloader and 4 partition entries. Some other versions of the MBR store additional data, but that data is for the bootloader or specific firmware to use. 512 bytes isn't enough to store a file system.
@@abdullahal-ahmati5030 if i recall correctly mbr do have a pointer points to multilevel file index
Linus and friends: trying expensive tools and Windows utilities to see how well they work
Me: laughs in dd
Linux gang assemble
@@AppallingScholar whats dd?
@@Clearshot128 oh ok
GamersForLife disk destroyer
Or use shred. That usually works to zero fill drives.
No way I literally just had a ad about this key right before the video AND THATS ON GOD
No, MBR and GPT have nothing to do with file records. That's in the file system, not the partition table.....
take my upvote
I think they were mixing it up with the way quick formatting works, that just erases the partition entry in the gpt/mbr
They don't, they are simply the structure of how the drive is partitioned and how the corresponding OS will be installed on it.
Je is wrong at 0:38. MBR or GPT has nothing to do regarding the files. That is file system business. The MBR and GPT holds the information on how the logical partitions, containing file systems, are organized on that medium.
@Galaxy TS2 No it does not. Data and even partition recovery is QUITE possible with SSDs and provided by pretty much EVERY recovery software out there. Though they are very random in where they write files (cause anti-wear and such) most software can still ask the controller to give raw data and reconstruct out of it. If anything they tend to be far more annoying to properly fully erase hence you have manufacturers providing tools to do so included.
Is also why if the SSD is to store sensitive data it is a common option to turn the SDD into a Self-Encrypting-Disc. Which would block recovery attempts without the right key.
+1 if we aren't including any form of LVM
Also, assuming you mean partitions since logical partitons are described by EBR(s) on the physical partition (When using MBR).
Do you work there?
@@Foxhood There's an ATA command to secure erase SSDs. You won't recover files after using said command...just like you won't recover files once TRIM has run.
the entry of the file does NOT live in MBR or GPT (partition table does), so when Linus said when a file was deleted, the entry of the file was deleted from MBR or GPT, was in fact completely wrong
I like how linus checked his phone for what he was being sponsored by XD
He always does that lol
*_How to properly wipe your metal computer_*
I see u everywhere
no
*How to properly diagnose your son Yespacito’s Down syndrome*
Yespacito vs. How to properly clean your metal computer. The battle of the commenters you see everywhere.
I smell I, a new challenger, Justin Y.
"The entry in the MBR or the GPT gets deleted"
Wtf neither the MBR nor the GPT store file entries. They just store partition entries. The file entries are stored on the filesystems that reside in the partitions defined in the MBR/GPT.
Nerd
@@Nobody-vr5nl no u
@@Nobody-vr5nl There's nothing wrong with being a nerd. :D
Yeah, I knew Linus wasn't the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to technology but it was still kinda shocking to hear him say those words. And nobody caught it in post either. Wow.
@@brendanpelle2566 Well, your experience is obviously pretty bad, because deleting the MBR can be easily rewritten with a new MBR and the filesystem will be intact. Even Windows has a "repair" mode that will restore the MBR for you.
It's really just DBAN on a jump drive???
Yup. Bit of a scam. But for noobs might be helpful especially with that clean GUI.
Yeah, I'd say this might be worth $5 or a maximum of $10.
The packaging looks pretty sick.
Darik's BAN if by far good enough.
@@leblatt "by far good enough" 😆
@@movement2contact I see what you mean. "good enough" is so often used in irony. Imeant "sufficient". English is my 3rd language so I may sound goofy sometimes ;)
Why the heck did I just get an ad of red key on the red key video-
boot from linux usb drive, then "blkdiscard /dev/sda" or any other SSD, will send a trim command to the entire device, telling the SSD to kill it all...
blkdiscard is not a secure erase. It's not comparable to DBAN or the red key.
@@wumbology8421 True, but you would need to get out the soldering iron to get anything, and most it will already be gone, but more importantly, writing random data to an SSD is pointless, wastes drive life, and takes way too long for what it does... If you really want to take a long time you can also just do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G" to actually write 0's to the SSD, but the drive itself is doing that already on its own in the background when you run a blkdiscard...
The random writes only makes sense to HDD, and even then I am told they are still able to get stuff from the drive unless you go through the nightmare of something like 20 passes to guarantee it is dead... And even then, they are still getting better all the time, and 20 passes may still not be good enough...
Bottom line, if it is really that important that no one get the stuff off the drive, just burn it to a cinder, otherwise blkdiscard takes seconds and does a good job for SSD, and "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G" works pretty well on a HDD...
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1G on an SSD might not kill all the data due to wear leveling. Basically, an SSD can decide on its own where it puts the data and might create copies of the data internally without you knowing. The dd will only overwrite the last copy while the proper ATA command should kill all. For newer SSDs it is even better as they all use encryption internally and will only overwrite the encryption key to delete all data
@@hawkanonymous2610 true, even drives that don't have TRIM will garbage collect though, and will add pages to have 0's written to them to get them ready to be written to though, so any data that the over-provisioning didn't let you touch should still soon be blank... again if it is that important, just burn the drive to a cinder
File entry in the *MBR,* on in the *GPT* ??!! Riiiiight... why use the FAT table, or the MFT on NTSF drives, when you can just place your file entries *right* *in* *the* *Master* *Boot* *Record* next to all the partitions? Its in the name, they are *Partition* tables, they do *not* store file entries! Dear Lord, Linus how could you read that script with a straight face??!!
I didn't understand a single word you said
i.imgur.com/ui4keF0.png
Haha, thanks, was looking exactly for this comment. What a dumb text he read, completely oblivious to block device layering.
NTFS*
Linus is dumb today
he's the one with the most outright and honest way of promoting his sponsors...
I love these videos of linus messing around with his testbench in his office I wish there was a playlist of these
I might try one of these. It's annoying what my PC gets dusty, so having this be able to wipe in in just 2 minutes sounds great! As a matter of fact, I just am going to order one right now!
But the real question is, could a data recovery company recover the data.
not if you use one of the more drastic methods listed especially if you drill a whole in it afterwords
yes
No. Their real skill is taking broken drives and using parts from working drives to get the data back. As for software data recovery there's not a huge difference between them. They're just scanning for existing files that aren't yet over written.
Do not listen to the myth that data recovery is super easy unless you do 35 wipes, a 1 pass secure wipe gets rid of the data
@@patbrown5833 That is only true for non magnetic media and you should still use random on those. If somone is realy desperrate to get your data you can get them still back from the leftover magnetic fields in lower layers of the disk or reconstruct from the wear of chips.
But you should feel save unless CEO(big company), Politician or a terrorist.
8:52
"Well, there's your problem..."
Copyright infringement complaint from Mythbusters in 3.....2.....1....... :-)
This video has been claimed....
Millionare idea: Lets make a drive that does the same but instead of replacing with random values it rewrites the entire SSD with rickrolls
So basically you just want a terabyte of rickrolls that you can import over after the whipe
0:41 "entry for the file" wat ... MBR and GPT contain entries for partitions.
darkSorceror xD ikr
yeah, Linus is getting his partition tables mixed up with filesystems...
No. This is not the guy behind Linux
@starshipeleven In the context, what they're talking about is creating an empty partition anyway, not screwing around with the actual filesystem.
Linus Tank Tops
You can buy a thumb drive and put dban on it for less than the cost of a redkey, dban works for SSDs. There is a secure erase command in most SATA firmwares which is faster.
Can you teach me about the SATA method please? Does it also work on HDD?
@@TheStarscouts how?
DBAN has a disclaimer that says specifically not to use it on SSDs. It won't cover some of the extra addressable space on SSDs.
*KGB wants to know your location*
LOOOOOL kgb is waaay ahead of this us shit
@@vexx5955 True. Now they use Google Earth.
Previous month I managed to gather my first five figure wage ever!!! I've been working for this provider online for 2 yrs now and I never been happier... They are paying me $95 per hour, and the most important thing about it is the fact that I am not really that tech-savvy, they just asked for standard idea of internet and plain typing skill...Great thing about this gig is that I have more time with my family. I am in a position to spend quality time with my relatives and buddies and look after my babies and also going on holiday vacation with them very frequently. Don't let pass this chance and try to react fast. Let me show you what I do... *amazing73.com*
Товарищ Slide Wreck Dan, мы уже знаем где вы находитесь. Ленин! Партия! Комсомол!
@@vexx5955 yeah, but what about the FSB?
Has anybody dumped the USB partitions of this key yet? Does it just use a standard USB stick, or is there special hardware inside..?
0:53
Sry Linus, but the file entry is not saved in the GPT or MBR. This two data structures describe partion of a harddrive. The place where the file entry is saved depends on the file system. On Windows most common file systems are FAT and NTFS. In FAT the file entry is saved in the File Allocation Table (short FAT) and in NTFS in the Master File Table (MFT)
Greedings from Saxony/Germany
Lmao saxony doesn't exist
I HOPE someone told Linus that the "zero data" is likely the least secure option. by definition, zero data means to just write all zeros to drive. a drive that then is scanned using extra sensitive equipment could see that the drive is "all zeros" but some of those "zeros" is more to zero than others. if new drive receives a file and then is zeroed the bits "closest" to ones could be assumed to be ones while the rest is assumed to be zeros very likely then would recreate the deleted file. even a file that was on erased data could be reconstructed.
whole volumes have been written on the rewrite process but suffice to say, random algorithms that does multiple passes (7 vs 31 passes, more is better) is way to go.
For someone that is donating/selling their drive to another person and doesn't really need to worry about hiding government secrets, zeroing out is good enough. This is a guide for the average Joe, not secret agents
Zeroing still won't allow software based recoveries. If you're hiding from intelligence agencies, then sure, a zero pass maybe isn't enough. Even then, there's not a lot of information out there on how recoverable a zero pass is even by intelligence agencies.
For SSDs, Linux live cd, run blkdiscard. Trims the entire drive, no data can be found and is as instant as you're going to get.
SSD with TRIM support enabled in the OS will also just delete the data pretty fast in most cases...
For regular harddrives, well I use linux's dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ method, simple and free, and can be used with any random USB drive
if=/dev/urandom makes more sense than zeroing.
@@myownsite /dev/urandom is relatively slow with number generation and could end up being a bottleneck.
@@namAehT You're thinking /dev/random, which depletes the entropy pool generated by input devices and therefore can block any process dependent on its output. In contrast, /dev/urandom provide continuous output by reusing the entropy pool, but at the cost of not generating "high-quality randomness" (although for this use-case this is completely unnecessary).
Either way, imo /dev/zero would still be the less hardware intensive and more straightforward pool to simply format. Randomness is only necessary if you want to give the illusion of recoverable data still present.
@@robinc.5077 OK, actually recoverable by data recovery companies and just being able to dump the drive and just see a bunch of zeroes is a different use case. I haven't come across an SSD that does not just completely wipe with TRIM (samsungs leave some random things behind but not any files I had on it before). So depends. If it's a drive you're selling it's probably fine. If you're a government spy, an actual overwrite might be better. Just check the result of trimming the entire drive with hexdump or something :)
Now Linus, if YOU my dear friend are reading this: THESE ARE the sort of videos we as consumers NEED!
How to wipe any SSD that supports secure wipe.
Regenerate an encryption key. Done.
Hardware based encryption of consumer level hard drives is insecure af. Any recovery specialist worth their money can bypass that shit in minutes
@@asmodin88 really? Care to reference any sort of evidence? Because as someone who needs to keep apprised of security issues for my day job I can only think of one study that challenged the implementation of FDE implementations on SSDs www.ru.nl/publish/pages/909275/draft-paper_1.pdf
It was published late 2018 and it was a technique capable by academic researchers in laboratory conditions. The vulnerabilities identified were also patched by the affected manufacturers prior to the papers release.
I've not seen nor heard of any capabilities by disk recovery labs of achieving the same either prior or since the papers release but I welcome any evidence you can provide to the contrary.
@@lmaoroflcopter the paper you linked is what I read/heard about.
Back then I think I read that some of the issues are actually structural and can't just be fixed with a firmware update, but I have no idea of that is true or not.
I always just thought that having your encryption key saved physically somewhere within the hardware itself seemed like a dumb idea, which is only implemented for convenience, marketing and speed reasons.
Your username might be your hard drive encryption key?!!!!!
Wrong! Insert correct secure erase media > perform secure erase