Erase Hard Drive completely...

[nissmo300]

I want to sell my 120 GB hard drive and I want to completely erase its contents as I had personal information, documents, business files, financial things on it. I don't want to break it with a hammer becuase it'll be a waste.

Can you guys give me some advice on software that will allow me to zero fill it or write over with random numbers. If it takes 35+ passes to make it competely unrecoverable it doesn't matter I'll let it make 50 passes if needed. Let me know, thanks.

[twodogs]

freeware: http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

review here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,7223,00.asp

[808smokey]

window washer, with bleach. It's a real program...

[tompika]

window washer, with bleach. It's a real program...

Yo! Its a real program but not for erasing hard drive completely...

[mujahid7ia]

http://www.killdisk.com/
From PC World Answer Line-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm replacing my hard drive. How do I totally obliterate sensitive data on the old drive?

Jim Mercer, via the Internet

To truly erase data, you need to write over it. Simply deleting files or reformatting the drive won't do. Luckily, plenty of free and inexpensive wipe programs (also known as shredders) can cover the data with zeroes or random patterns, making it unreadable by data-restoration software.

Some machines can recover data that's been written over only one or two times, however. That's where secure delete standards, such as the Department of Defense 5220.22-M, come in. According to this specification, overwriting the drive sectors three times with specific, different characters constitutes one pass. Many experts recommend seven such passes to render the data completely unrecoverable. But reading data that has been overwritten by even the simplest shredders requires expensive hardware, so unless you're worried about professional sleuths, such thorough overwriting probably isn't necessary.

Keep in mind that deleting just the sensitive files may not protect you fully. Unidentified copies of those files could exist in "unused" parts of your hard drive, or in your swap file, among other possible locations. It's a good idea to wipe these areas of your drive as well--or go the surefire route and wipe your entire hard drive. (See "Hard Drives Exposed" for more on the dangers of unwiped hard drives.)

To clean up specific files (none holding state secrets) and the drive's free space, rely on Summit Computer's free Hard Disk Scrubber 2. To be extra cautious, check Heavy Scrub to write over the disk three times (see FIGURE 1). Visit Summit to download your copy.

A more powerful option is Jetico's $40 BCWipe 3, which adds 5220.22-M support and cleans up unused space in the swap file. Visit Jetico to download the trial version.

To wipe the entire drive, I recommend LSoft Technologies' free Active@ KillDisk or its $30 sibling, Active@ KillDisk Professional. The DOS programs load from a bootable floppy and overwrite every partition on the hard drive. The free version does a basic wipe, covering the drive with zeroes in one pass. Professional adds 5220.22-M-compliant wiping, and it will make as many passes as you like.

Wiping takes time, however. On my test system, KillDisk took more than 12 hours to complete one pass of a 13GB drive. The recommended seven passes could take days. You can download the freeware version from our Downloads library, or head to the vendor's site to buy the Professional version.
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http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22393,00.asp

another good one

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yet another

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22961,00.asp

[BJ_M]

12 hours for a 13 gig drive -- ouch ...


lets see --- 7 passes for a 120 gig drive= 35 days ..

35 days of thrashing your drive wil prob. kill it anyway .. though it certainly will be wiped ..

[SLK001]

I want to sell my 120 GB hard drive and I want to completely erase its contents as I had personal information, documents, business files, financial things on it. I don't want to break it with a hammer becuase it'll be a waste.

Can you guys give me some advice on software that will allow me to zero fill it or write over with random numbers. If it takes 35+ passes to make it competely unrecoverable it doesn't matter I'll let it make 50 passes if needed. Let me know, thanks.

Why are you wasting all this time? Are you an undercover agent for the North Korean Secret Service?

If you want to erase the drive good enough to thwart 99.99% of all recover techniques, just remove any partitions from the drive, then low-level format the drive. This will effectively erase all your data. Do it twice, or thrice - each time reduces the possibility of recovery.

[Amaro]

Good old FDISK.EXE should do it

[BJ_M]

Good old FDISK.EXE should do it
:)

fdisk does basicly nothing .. you could fdisk a drive 100 times and i would still be able to retrive all of it with ontrack data recovery (and there are a LOT more powerfull tools for thus out there) ...

[redwudz]

Download wall to wall porn videos onto it. If they really want to check out the drive, at least they will be entertained. Or use Eraser and only erase the vital data, it won't take so long.

[dmonty]

Check on the Drive manufacturer's website and look for a Low Level Format utility. Unlike the regular Format method which only deletes the drive's directory information a Low Level Format will overwrite all data sectors.

[jeex]

this is my favorite method for making data unrecoverable;

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/darktips/story/0,24330,3547954,00.html

watch the videos, they're quite entertaining