Wiping a 1TB HD, need help!

[Maboof]

Hi everyone I'm just in need of some help answering a few questions I have about my method that I have used to wipe my old hard drive before giving a system to a friend. I've used SlimCleaner on another system to wipe a 1TB Seagate Barracuda of all it's data, this process has taken 13 hours already and it's only at 404.00 GB of 725gb (there is a system reserved partition of 100mb). I'm not sure where the other 200gb or so is as it's not showing up... am I doing this wrong or is the computer I'm using to blame? thanks!

[Barry]

Use DBan

[Maboof]

Thanks:-)

[big_hairy_rob]

Buy a new hard drive and reinstall - destroy (powershred) the old hard drive. It's the only way to 100% ensure that you are not giving data.

[mikeo01]

I usually delete the partitions straight off then clean it up to double check.

Usually just use good old Windows to format it.

I have used Auslogics Swipe Clean to make sure theres nothing else lurking in free space.

[Scainer]

I did a little forensic computing and there is many arguments regarding recovery, but the truth is that most data is never really deleted it is just made available to be written over. So if its still there it can be recovered.
Studies have shown that Zero Fill Utilities make recovery as good as impossible after a single pass. i.e. Any recovery will be so small that it would be meaningless.
Some state that the residual echo can last up to three writes but this usually comes from a company trying to sell a product. "Getting a new drive" is just propaganda by the drive manufacturers.

http://killdisk.com/
http://www.dban.org/

Just remember that these tools write over every section of the drive so takes a long time.

[Onkston]

+1 for dban for me too, I've used it quite a few times and it's pretty decent, nice and easy

[jimborae]

another vote for dban, just make sure you select the right option you want for wiping.

[peterb]

I usually delete the partitions straight off then clean it up to double check.

Usually just use good old Windows to format it.

I have used Auslogics Swipe Clean to make sure theres nothing else lurking in free space.

Deleting the partition table does NOIT delete data - it only deletes the 64 bytes of the partition table.

A windows 'format' does NPOT format the disk - it only initialises the Master File Table.

In both those cases data can be recovered.

DBan has been recommended, but a linux live CCD and using the ddcommand to write zerro to every location will do the job.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd<drive letter>

You can speed it up by setting a large block size.

[directhex]

You can speed it up by setting a large block size.

(add a bs=8M or similar to the dd command peterb posted)