It’s long been known that simply pressing delete on your keyboard doesn’t really get rid of data in your hard drive. You can even empty the recycle bin all you want or go through the trouble of reformatting the hard drive – you’ll still be leaving recoverable traces that can be used to piece old data back together. Yes, there are some tools out there that can get the job done, although the Lovell Destruct sounds a whole lot simpler.
A bootable USB dongle that automatically erases a hard drive after booting, the dongle is equipped with an auto-launching military-grade data wipe software that will permanently remove all traces of data from the drive. Whether you’re looking to sell an old laptop, removing compromising data from a hard drive without wrecking it, or just want to remove all traces of personal information from your work computer, this thing lets you do that with plug-and-play simplicity.
The Lovell Destruct is a key-shaped USB dongle, complete with a hole at the head, so you can hook it in your key fob, giving you easy access to a data remover right in your pocket. To use, simply set the computer to boot from USB, plug it into an available port, and leave it to go to work. The auto-launching software will then proceed will the data removal process, which spans three successive passes, all launched one after the other. Do note, this thing goes straight to work deleting content from all hard drives hooked up to your PC, so make sure you don’t have any external drives hooked up or any data lying somewhere that you actually want to keep.
The first pass will take a couple of hours (actual time varies depending on drive size), doing a superficial cleaning of the drives automatically. The second pass is a lot more involved, as it thoroughly scours for any remaining data it will need to remove, so expect this phase to go a whole lot longer (like an entire day or more). This, by the way, is the kind of data wipe that regular operating systems just do not perform, which is why most good recovery software are able to get a good chunk of old data back. The third pass is, basically, a final cleanup, just in case it missed anything from the first two, and should finish a little sooner than the first pass.
As you can tell from that description, the Lovell Destruct isn’t the kind of thing that can wipe your hard drive in a single afternoon. Instead, it’s the kind of thing you’ll have to plug in and leave to do its own thing for a day or more, only checking in once in a while to intervene, in case it encountered any issues. The outfit claims, doing all three passes will ensure no data is recoverable from the drive, ensuring even more popular recovery software won’t be able to unearth any of those private documents that will compromise your secret superhero identity.
The Lovell Destruct is available now.
