what software for completely wiping a Hard drive?

[petrefax]

i know there was a thread about this recently but do you think i can find it??? 25 minutes of searching & i'm still none the wiser so apologies for asking a question thats already been answered

anyway, i'm having a clear out & have about 12 old hard drives lying around, i'm thinking of selling them but obvioulsy i'd need to clear them down properly before doing so

since most of these have come from old machines i've stripped down i don't actually know whats been on them during their lifetime, so partly to protect myself from what other people may or may not have been up to, and partly not to fall foul of the data protection act (slim chance but would rather be safe) whats the best software for completely wiping a hard drive so that none of the previous data is recoverable

cheers

Ben

[alexander]

A straight format ain't it?

[Moby-Dick]

nope - you need to run at least a 7 pass wipe for data to be unrecoverable within reasonable limits.

chap I know that sells old servers on ebay has to run a 30 pass wipe ( for obvious reasons ) - he sent a drive off to be tested and round that much of the data was still recoverable after the 7 pass.

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/security/fwerase.html has some good utils on it.

[petrefax]

cheers moby, much appreciated

[Apex]

DBan

[oralpain]

A zero-write or low level format would be good enough for 99% of things. Most harddrive manufactures have zero-write software you can download.

A standard format doesn't erase much of anything.

I'll give this DBAN thing a try.

[jimborae]

Another vote for Dban, it's great & it's free.

[Mr Meltdown]

I use Zdelete http://www.zdelete.net/ 30 day trial (change system date to continue use)

Cheers,

MM

[Ramedge]

a good lowlevel formatter is one you can get from samsung for their disks - but it will work on any drive - very good qwick and easy

[nichomach]

Heidi Eraser is good, free, and includes a facility to create a DBAN boot disk as well.

[muddyfox470]

Because i use Maxtor Harddrives i can use Maxblast, you have 2 options, quick format which just erases the first 62 sectors or something.

Or there is a complete zero write which will make anything irrecoverable, however it takes forever, forinstance after 10/20 mins only 1% had been done on my 80gb IDE hard drive!

But if you want to do it properly you need to take your time

Ian

[cptwhite_uk]

Another vote for Eraser - highly recommended and free.

[BUFF]

As it happens I was using Eraser the other day so I guess that's another vote for it.

[Devilman]

Hmm, iirc a low level format does nothing more than reset every sector on the drive to 0, for which you can even use a hex editor, tho you will probly find that software specifically designed for clearing drives is a bit faster than a hex editor

[poindextermatic]

How do you go about finding this data that is not wiped?
Are you saying I can find data on my old HDD's that I wiped and then put a clean copy of windows on??

[wilto]

How do you go about finding this data that is not wiped?
Are you saying I can find data on my old HDD's that I wiped and then put a clean copy of windows on??

very good question...

thats what i would like to know.......