Is there a program like DBAN, that can wipe external hard drives clean?

[Denvers Dawgs]

I have a few external drives that I'd like to completely erase and swipe clean, and would rather not have to remove them and put them in my pc to do this. Is there a program like DBAN that will work on external hard drives?

[Bagheera]

Yes, there is one. The government uses it.

Try the link at the bottom. It's the only thing I use. It writes all 0's to the drive. Nothing, and I mean nothing can be retrieved off the drive. It is erased to factory new. They have a free version and a full version. There is virtually no difference in the versions. I use the free version myself.

http://www.killdisk.com/

[Strahlen]

Denvers Dawgs, the >>beta<< version of DBAN will detect external HD's just fine. I'm using it at this very moment, erasing a Lacie external USB (Toshiba) 150GB HD, attached to an Asus Eee 900.

dban-beta.2007042900_i386.zip

Currently only available as an .iso.

It is available here: http://www.dban.org/download

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Download Darik's Boot and Nuke 2.0.0

(This beta is of production quality, but it never got tagged.)

* for DBAN for Apple Power Mac.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dban/dban-2.0.0_powerpc.iso?download

* for DBAN for recent Intel and AMD computers.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dban/dban-beta.2007042900_i386.zip?download

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Nothing wrong with Bagheera's link by the way, I just like to tweak the erase method, using PRNG (ISAAC) with verify switched off. Hope this helps.

[guns1inger]

Yes, there is one. The government uses it.

Try the link at the bottom. It's the only thing I use. It writes all 0's to the drive. Nothing, and I mean nothing can be retrieved off the drive. It is erased to factory new. They have a free version and a full version. There is virtually no difference in the versions. I use the free version myself.

http://www.killdisk.com/

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this this does not erase a disk back to factory new, and data can be recovered from a disk processed by killdisk if the party searching for it wants it badly enough. It is possible to look at a disk surface and see how the magnetic particles are aligned and make very educated guesses as to what the original data was. This has been demonstrated as a feasible, if expensive and time consuming, method for data reconstruction.