Does DBAN reaaly fully erase the hd?

What are the MajorGeeks genius's opinions on DBAN?

 

Welcome to the forum LindaVn.

I have never tried DBAN but the products hosted on SourceForge are generally pretty good. The always seem to do what they're intended to do.

It does have different levels of wiping the drive from the Gutman method to the 3 pass DoD and the 7 pass DoD standard. For extreme paranoids, the 7 pass DoD should be adequate. For me, the 3 pass DoD would work just fine.

 

Thank you Mr. Shnerdly..


I was wondering if DBAN really worked to delete all those little willnotcomeoff partitions, that Linux installations couldn't and wouldn't delete.. I knew they were still on the hd when the new install's FireFox first loaded with some of my old custom configs.. Many times I've installed various Linux OS's, as I trekked through the hundreds of distro's, trying to find one I liked, and when I checked the partitions, before or after installations, I found a little partition, a few megs, that seemed to stay on the hd no matter what I did.. It was such a grief in Windows, that it forced me to switch to Linux...Usually those little partitions seemed to hold the problem I was trying to eliminate by the new install.. I supposed they were some kind of hacker cracker bug..? Maybe a keylogger, and something else strange and nasty..? is why I jumped to DBAN... I run "Chkrootkit" to search for keyloggers, but it never finds anything but false positives.. but where I post, it seems someone is reading my keyboard as I key, because sometimes the letters show on the forms very very slowly, in that particular blog.. I might key twenty letters, then have to wait 10 to 20 seconds till the keyed letters show.. What is that..? That it's some kind of "censorship" is obvious...

I'm asking, because I just dbanned a 150-gig hd in a Dell 5150, and now none of my 30 Linux CD's will boot it up for an install.. They start, then stall at "Ready"..? Fedora ISO's don't even get that far.. They show "no boot device present, press f1", and the bios data doesn't even show that it has a hd..? but it all worked before I ran DBAN.. It made my 3-gig files backup DVD without any probs... This one is very puzzling... Could it be a super-bug in the bios..? Can hacker-bugs go deeper then the bios..? How can you know there aren't any bios-bugs in a computer..?

Can it be a hardware glitch..? I pulled the battery for a few minutes.. I checked all the wires and connectors for conductivity.. I tested the DVD-RW drive in other towers.. it works just fine.. so do the CD's.. Only thing I didn't do was "sandpaper the hd-platter with a vengeance"... Any ideas to try big-guy..?

 

That would be the master boot record mbr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

 

Hmm, sounds like remnants of an infection could still be present. I've never used DBAN, what options did you use?

I've never seen an MBR that shows as any kind of partition, the MBR is the part that points to any partitions extant on a drive.

 

I used "dban's autonuke"..

So did I erase MBR.. being why Fedora-ISO doesn't even boot, and the other Linux distros stall..? I'm guessing that this Dell M-board isn't comfy losing its MBR, like most other computers can probably create their own MBR's from what's in the chips and ISO's.. is probably why there's so much net-chatter about Dell's be so problematic for novices to do installs..
So has Dell addressed this m-board MBR problem, if it is a m-board problem..?
or is it a secret feature that' hard o work around..?
or is poop in the Linux install ISO's, or system..?

What are the major differences between Dell m-boards and other mfgr's m-boards..?
Is Dell saving a buck a board by leaving out something..?
Or is old dell not quite compatable with new Linux..?
Or is Linux not addressing state of the art Dell stuff well enough..?
Or is Dell a Microsoft exclusive..?
Am I trying to install something too new on something too old..?

Is there a way to erase the MBR on call, and replace it with a clean one periodically..? like at every boot...
sort of like "giving the hd a cyber-enema" once in a while...

Is there software that can sniff-out the crap in the MBR, and another that cleans it out..?
Is there software that puts MBR in an encrypted locked safe..?
Is it the MBR that powerful hackers target..?
Does Storm e-virus attack the MBR..?
Seems that today's bugs are set to hit profiles..
Got any ideas when the computer world's gonna clue-into the fact that profiles need protecting..?

Umm..? Whatz uh MBR..?

What's the first command and switch in an MBR..?

 

Most important (in my view) points:
Tiny partition = common factor in many recent malwares that are <I must not use naughty words> hard to remove.
Being unable to boot/'losing' the drive from the BIOS detection routine and being unable to install a new OS, are pretty much all suggestive, if not diagnostic, of the same infection types.

The MBR (because of the earlier infection) is still under the control of the infection, because the infection cannot now point to the modified Windows code to allow boot (the Boot/Windows partition is gone), you cannot boot or install.

You must go over to the Malware forum and ask for help on this, it's not going to be something I can fix (well, perhaps in a few days, if the machine was in front of me).

 

Oh..?

OK, So the guy who gave me this tower said it was shot because it caught a real badbug, was right about the real badbug..

"A hard to remove bug".. It makes a little sense now, given all the problems it has been trying to run OS's on it...

Yup! I gots ta sandpaper the platter... What grit emery-cloth would ya recommend..?

I'm wondering if pulling the battery for ten minutes, and running DBAN twice might do something good..? or is it deeper than that..? Can a tower actually get totally wrecked from a little bug what's dug in like a tick..? Where exactly does a deep-bug hide..?
Can there be a way to fry what's sleeping in the deepest bug place in a computer, by attacking it with a barrage of grumpy 1" and 0"s..? Is there such a thing as a "looped or split "1" or "0"..?

Or maybe it's a faulty hd right at the first sector..? Can that do it..?

 

Don't do anything except follow implicitly the instructions for diagnosing and the resulting script running, etc., from our experts over in the malware forum - unless you want a new doorstop!

Please, go to the Malware forum and create a new thread, keep it simple, state the facts and wait a few hours, half a day or so, for further instructions. They're pretty busy; each of these infections are different in the way they affect a computer, it takes time and concentration to create the right fixes, in the correct order, to cure them. The half-fixed ones (as yours is) can be the most tricky.

 

OK.. I'm onto the other forum...

It's just that I like to explore things deeper than they can be explored.. because sometimes new inventions and ideas and solutions happen from pushing things deeper than usual... My bad...

But I'm not sure how to ask it in that forum...

 

Just something along the lines of - "Cannot install OS to drive after malware infection, looks like a tiny partition remains after DBAN" - and link back to this thread.

Asking questions is like seeking a diagnosis, jumping in with random tools to try to fix something unknown is asking for trouble. You did fine to explore, but you need to explore the answers too