Cipher vs Format on non-system disks

tfwul · 17 May 2018

No question, just raising a subject to see whether I am right or wrong...

cipher /W:X
versus
format X: /fs:NTFS /p:2

cipher takes quite a long time, even for a small disk.
(as a test: cipher took about 40 minutes for a 5GB HDD-partition)

for non-system disks (like backups) :
temporarily copy all folders and files to another drive
run above Format-cmd (admin)
and restore the folders and files

will probably a much faster way.
drawback: one may not have sufficient free space to move/copy hundreds of GB (or even a few TBs)...

CountMike · 17 May 2018

I just use Alternate File Shredder Alternate Tools - Alternate File Shredder to overwrite free space (including deleted file) and not kill whole disk. it takes about 30 minutes per TB on HDDs. I wouldn't do that to SSDs.

tfwul · 17 May 2018

Did you ever look what is being displayed when running Recuva, deep scan mode, immediately after wipe free space.
Over the last week I have been searching/checking secure delete tools, etc. and stumbled over the Alternate File Shredder.
Haven't tested it though. For secure deleting files I use WipeFile. It is natively portable, support context menu, renames files and folders, fast and small and Recuva indeed shows randomly renamed folders/files.
It does not include WFS though.

CountMike · 17 May 2018

tfwul said:

Did you ever look what is being displayed when running Recuva, deep scan mode, immediately after wipe free space.
Over the last week I have been searching/checking secure delete tools, etc. and stumbled over the Alternate File Shredder.
Haven't tested it though. For secure deleting files I use WipeFile. It is natively portable, support context menu, renames files and folders, fast and small and Recuva indeed shows randomly renamed folders/files.
It does not include WFS though.

Didn't really try to see if anything is recoverable but I do it only to gain on continuous free space, not for security reason.