boot and nuke

[spac3d]

What's the best software for this? Just downloaded some software marked Beta, don't really want to use it..

I just want to clean my external hard drive which I will be sending for RMA.

[jimborae]

I like Darik's Boot&Nuke aka dban, and if the one for newer chipsets & dual core cpus is still marked beta I can confirm that it does a really good job still.

[Repressor]

I'll just add that I think it was proven that seven passes will make it literally impossible to recover any data. Although this may take a while on huge hard drives

[.walls]

I'll just add that I think it was proven that seven passes will make it literally impossible to recover any data. Although this may take a while on huge hard drives

I assume that you mean Peter Gutmann's work (the Gutmann method uses 35 passes IIRC)? Realistically though, a single pass of zeros will do the job and much faster than a random pattern. Nobody is going to be that interested in OP's pr0n stash that they'll put in the effort required to recover it after that.

[Terbinator]

I assume that you mean Peter Gutmann's work (the Gutmann method uses 35 passes IIRC)? Realistically though, a single pass of zeros will do the job and much faster than a random pattern. Nobody is going to be that interested in OP's pr0n stash that they'll put in the effort required to recover it after that.

But recovered pr0n is the best!

[.walls]

But recovered pr0n is the best!

I'm not sure about that.... I mean what if you went to all the trouble (and once it's been overwritten with zeros, it's more than just "install this software and have a scan to recover it") just to find that all the OP's pr0n was of the "girls and cup" variety?

[snail]

I think it would be worth the lol's to recover it and to end up with just generic stuff.

I use incinerator from system mechanic but again thats not a free software so I can't give you any other advice

[dirky]

DBAN - I use the 3 pass version quite alot. The new beta versions just add usb support etc

[.walls]

As others have said, DBAN is pretty standard and does a very good job, but if you have linux installed, then you can use

dd if=/dev/zero*** of=/dev/sdb

assuming that /dev/sdb is the drive you want to nuke.

*** You could use /dev/random or /dev/urandom as well, but they are slower.

[spac3d]

Guys, I just want to get rid of my linux distro's that's all.

[CaptainCrash]

Guys, I just want to get rid of my linux distro's that's all.

lol... after a one-pass zero fill (the dd command mentioned above will do it perfectly), the data is gone. Completely, utterly and irretrievably. Any reputable data recovery firm will tell you the same.

Incidentally, a full format in Vista or Win 7 also performs a zero-fill (this wasn't the case in XP and before).