How to completely wipe an HDD

[k4p84]

Hi all

I'm selling one of my old HDD.

I am trying to remove all trace I ever used it.

It was my main OS drive with all my personal docs etc.

I know formatting does sweet f.a. as far as data removal goes so I have used the Western Digital tools and written the entire drive to zero's...... four times.

I have at work with me and I am going to try and use some tools to see if I can retrieve any data off it.

I am going to try DBam later as I hear that is pretty potent.

I know you can not guarantee ever erasing everything, even writing over it 35 times with random data, but I'm after a happy medium.

Any other thoughts guys.

Ed

 

[GavX]

piece of software called "Blannco" or something is what we use at work to completely erase all data on a drive, or at least writes over all the sectors/clusters with gibberish, that or Boot and Nuke, lots of nice things to erase all data completely

 

[k4p84]

BDam is the boot and nuke.

Glad I read the readme since it nicely states that you can not configure it to erase a specific drive it just wipes everything it comes across.

Pity it can not be run against an external but without killing your OS disk but still I'll be setting that one up to run on my work machine overnight.

I'll know in the morning if it worked or if it cleaned out the network........... note to self, unplug network lead..

Ed

 

[Judderman]

Hi all

I'm selling one of my old HDD.

I am trying to remove all trace I ever used it.

It was my main OS drive with all my personal docs etc.

I know formatting does sweet f.a. as far as data removal goes so I have used the Western Digital tools and written the entire drive to zero's...... four times.

I have at work with me and I am going to try and use some tools to see if I can retrieve any data off it.

I am going to try DBam later as I hear that is pretty potent.

I know you can not guarantee ever erasing everything, even writing over it 35 times with random data, but I'm after a happy medium.

Any other thoughts guys.

Ed

GDisk as well is a high level format tool that actually clears data rather than just flipping it.