What is Disk Wiping?

DESG
1 day ago
1 min read

Today let's talk about Disk Wiping!

Let's start with what disk wiping is...

no, not this kind of wiping

Disk wiping securely removes data from a storage device so that it cannot be recovered. It is a recognised approach to media sanitization under the NIST SP 800-88 guidelines.

What about formatting? Is that wiping your disk?

No. Formatting recreates the file system and may remove access to the files, but recoverable data can still remain. Secure wiping sanitises the drive using an appropriate method to make the original data inaccessible.

so...why wipe?

If a working SSD or HDD needs to be repurposed, redeployed or reused, wiping lets you securely remove the data without destroying the disk itself.

Because once you physically destroy it, that's it - you can't use it again (and a perfectly good disk goes to waste...)

now how can i POSSIBLY reuse this...

and this leads us to ESG...which we will talk about later!

Is this the end?

Well, you would have to perform verification to ensure that everything has been wiped properly. This is done through read-back verification, spot checks across different areas of the disk, and checking that the sanitisation process completed successfully.

So, disk wiping not only securely removes the data without unnecessarily destroying a perfectly usable disk, it also ties in nicely with the goals of ESG!