Computer Hope
Hardware => Hardware => Topic started by: The Bubba on August 18, 2010, 07:16:12 PM
-
I know how to do this but am also using a free program called eraser that supposedly renders the hard drive irretrievable to some one that gets it afterwards thus protecting any personal things not wanting to be seen. Does anyone know of this program or one better...free is good.
-
Haven't used Eraser. Darik's Boot and Nuke does a fair job DBAN.org
-
Look for the Ultimate Boot CD and it has HDD tools to wipe the drive. I believe there are 3 to chose from. But if you really want to give your drive away, do more than one pass.
-
Aww, your no fun for the hands of a malicious person with the capability to restore previously recorded and deleted data! Simply erasing all the data on your hard drive and formatting. ;)
Obviously, the easiest way to go about it, if your choosing to get rid of the hard drive is to physically smash it around it's headers.
A government formatting is wiping it 7 times over, the data becomes barely readable and almost impossible to recover.
Shred formatting overwrite the original a number of times (again 7 is the magic number for most) before zeroing out all the data.
Look for 'disk wiping software' like:
http://eraser.heidi.ie/
http://www.diskwipe.org/
http://www.killdisk.com/
http://www.dban.org/
In your case since your already got Eraser, that's a pretty good free one.
-
Thanks for the responses. Now, does it make any difference whether I format it first or does it matter whether I format it at all before using one of the drive kill programs.
-
Wouldn't make a difference - except for the waiting around doing it time...
I would highly recommend a 7 pass wipe or more (aka government pass), however if you want it fully secure. Most basic free software knows to do only 6 passes or less on purpose so it can still be recovered and loosely pieced back together if really wanted to (you can make the guess at why).
-
Wouldn't make a difference - except for the waiting around doing it time...
I would highly recommend a 7 pass wipe or more (aka government pass), however if you want it fully secure. Most basic free software knows to do only 6 passes or less on purpose so it can still be recovered and loosely pieced back together if really wanted to (you can make the guess at why).
Thanks, you've been a big help. I downloaded DBAN along with Eraser.