Best software for erasing a drive I'm selling?

[Jeff7181]

I'm looking for software to completely erase a hard drive I'm selling. The info on it isn't a matter of national security or anything... I would just prefer that someone isn't able to look at my family photos I had stored on the drive, or installed programs and whatnot.

[83racecrew]

Jeff....do you have Norton systemworks? its got a drive eraser/blanker thing, lol

Its probably pretty low buck by "national security" standards but...

The other thing you can do is format the drive 3 times in a row :)

[ThugsRook]

fdisk/mbr
fdisk (remove partitions)
fdisk (create partition)
format

thats all ya need todo :)
id test it with diagnostic software before selling it ;)

:beer:

[Jeff7181]

I don't have System Works.

I think Western Digital's disk tools have a utility that will write zero's to the drive... if I do that a few times do ya think that would do it?

[BB_One]

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Edit: Deleting a file, partitioning a disk, or formatting a hard drive will not erase your data.

I have a few softy here that can prouve that day in and day out.

One of them is call Encase, do some googling u'll be surprise!

More common ones include Disk explorer, Disk Investigator, DriveLook,to name only a few.

[83racecrew]

Really BB? I though formatting 3 times in a row got rid of everything....hmmm better look into where I got that info from :scratch: :irk:

[BB_One]

REALLY ! format 10 times and I will still be able to reconstruct the data to about 70% TO 80% ACCURACY.

Encase forensic is a very powerfull tool, primarely used by Law enforcement and one version is not offered to consumer and can only be obtain with proper credentials.

In short u need to WRITE on that drive, and write over and over in order to mask the data that was there before. Military specs of various security levels, dictates the type of writting and the amount of time it must be done for say day to day use computing.

Top Secret handling hard drives are crushed and melted. Simple.

Other way is to magnitized the drive, but even that is not 100% safe, and therefor used by some organizations...here is an example of a product:

http://www.datadev.com/ge4000.html

[Jeff7181]

Thanks guys.

[sodface]

SDelete (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/sdelete.shtml)


The only way to ensure that deleted files, as well as files that you encrypt with EFS, are safe from recovery is to use a secure delete application. Secure delete applications overwrite a deleted file's on-disk data using techiques that are shown to make disk data unrecoverable, even using recovery technology that can read patterns in magnetic media that reveal weakly deleted files. SDelete (Secure Delete) is such an application. You can use SDelete both to securely delete existing files, as well as to securely erase any file data that exists in the unallocated portions of a disk (including files that you have already deleted or encrypted). SDelete implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M, to give you confidence that once deleted with SDelete, your file data is gone forever.

And it's free :thumbs:

[ThugsRook]

SDelete (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/sdelete.shtml)

And it's free :thumbs:
nice :thumb:

[ALX_eater]

Top Secret handling hard drives are crushed and melted. Simple.

We've sanded down the platters on a grinder...but the "authorized" method is to ship them to a certain three letter agency and they use this degausser that can suck the iron out of you blood from 30 feet(maybe it's 3 feet but that's close enough for govy work!!)

[Hawk]

Look for a shareware proggie call KILLDISK.


:rock: :rock: :rock: :rock: