Any freeware to completely wipe out my HD?

[webmal]

I'm going to sell my HD. I know that formatting my HD will not destroy my data completely. Is there any freeware that can do it?

Thank you.

Webmal

 

[drag]

go download a linux boot disk. Knoppix, or if you want a floppy tomsrtbt.

Each hardware device has a different name (linux doesn't use C: and stuff like that)

/dev/hda = primary master IDE device
/dev/hdb = primary slave IDE device
/dev/hdc = secondary master IDE device
/dev/hdd = secondary slave IDE device

the command to wipe the drive if it is the primary master IDE device would be:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

That's it.

If your realy paranoid, do this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

That will wipe everything from the MBR down to the last sector of the harddrive. It'll be as clean as you just bought it.

 

[Davegod75]

search for Dban...it is very easy to use + free + good

 

[Allio]

BCWipe will do it, but it's probably overkill. It's something like 150 hours to completely kill a large hard drive

 

[BZeto]

Most hard disk manufacturers have their own disk utilities, such as the Seagate Disk Wizard. With most of these you can perform a low level format.

 

[Isaiah]

check out madboot's LL format thing, but again it's more then you need, and will take along time!

 

[Lyfer]

how about format.com on a win9x bootdisk from bootdisk.com ?

 

[Bar81]

This is what you need, you can get as neurotic as you need to be (there are several levels of extremity when it comes to wiping, you choose depending on how safe you want to be)

http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/14/4/14-4-53.shtml

 

[ross8425]

why would you want to sell your hard drive? you can never have too many of them, and the money you will get for a used hard drive is just not worth it anyway.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: drag

If your realy paranoid, do this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

That will wipe everything from the MBR down to the last sector of the harddrive. It'll be as clean as you just bought it.

No, the drive will contain completely random data, with traces of your original data still magnetically present. The DoD requires 7 writes of specific bit patterns to erase the latent magnetic data. However, for really sensitive stuff, they physically destroy the platters, which means they don't even completely trust thier algorithms.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz

Originally posted by: drag

If your realy paranoid, do this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

That will wipe everything from the MBR down to the last sector of the harddrive. It'll be as clean as you just bought it.

No, the drive will contain completely random data, with traces of your original data still magnetically present. The DoD requires 7 writes of specific bit patterns to erase the latent magnetic data. However, for really sensitive stuff, they physically destroy the platters, which means they don't even completely trust thier algorithms.

The DoD is behind the times. It's possible that traces will be present no matter what you do. All 0's, all 1's, and random 0's and 1's are the best bets for most people. (combination sof the three)

 

[McMadman]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

The DoD is behind the times. It's possible that traces will be present no matter what you do. All 0's, all 1's, and random 0's and 1's are the best bets for most people. (combination sof the three)

Now of course 7 passes (DoD.5200.28-STD I believe is 55AA/AA55/55AA/AA55/55AA/AA55/random) which is just simply alternating 01010101 and 10101010.

This is of course well beyond overkill for the majority of users who want to delete data beyond recovery (a simple zero fill will often stop the majority of people that may look to see if anythings easily recoverable) Most people think a simple format is enough since the files appear to be gone, when only the FAT is erased.

Supposingly even after 7 passes there could potentially be some recovery avaliable (costing thousands and thousands of dollars, which most people wouldn't have anything on their drives nearly that valuable.

DBAN will be more than enough. Supposingly it will erase ALL hard drives connected to the system, so you'd want to physically disconnect all but the drive to be wiped.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: McMadman

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

The DoD is behind the times. It's possible that traces will be present no matter what you do. All 0's, all 1's, and random 0's and 1's are the best bets for most people. (combination sof the three)

Now of course 7 passes (DoD.5200.28-STD I believe is 55AA/AA55/55AA/AA55/55AA/AA55/random) which is just simply alternating 01010101 and 10101010.

This is of course well beyond overkill for the majority of users who want to delete data beyond recovery (a simple zero fill will often stop the majority of people that may look to see if anythings easily recoverable) Most people think a simple format is enough since the files appear to be gone, when only the FAT is erased.

Supposingly even after 7 passes there could potentially be some recovery avaliable (costing thousands and thousands of dollars, which most people wouldn't have anything on their drives nearly that valuable.

DBAN will be more than enough. Supposingly it will erase ALL hard drives connected to the system, so you'd want to physically disconnect all but the drive to be wiped.

The measures taken should be in proportion to how much the potential data is worth to someone.

 

[randumb]

Eraser

 

[Tates]

Originally posted by: randumb
Eraser

Eraser 5.7

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz

Originally posted by: drag

If your realy paranoid, do this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

That will wipe everything from the MBR down to the last sector of the harddrive. It'll be as clean as you just bought it.

No, the drive will contain completely random data, with traces of your original data still magnetically present. The DoD requires 7 writes of specific bit patterns to erase the latent magnetic data. However, for really sensitive stuff, they physically destroy the platters, which means they don't even completely trust thier algorithms.

The DoD is behind the times. It's possible that traces will be present no matter what you do. All 0's, all 1's, and random 0's and 1's are the best bets for most people. (combination sof the three)

Just run it 7 times. Your done.

The problem is that there are variations in the head movement.

Now your already dealing with very small spaces, but because nothing is exact the designers of the harddrive have to make a little space between the successive lines of magnetic data. Just to take up the slop. If you have the head right data right next to each other, then you'd eventually have data migrating magneticly into the lines of data next to it. So they make a little space.

Now if data is on the disk for a long time, it will leave traces of magnitism on either side of were the data is written. So when you overwrite the data, a little bit of the magnitism from the original data is still existing in the channels of nothingness on either side. So if you want to recover this data you have to have a machine that is much more sensitive then the harddrive head itself... to read between the lines so to speak.

By writing over and over agian, it's hoped the successive writtings will overpower the residual stuff in the channel on either side of the data and obscure it enough to make recovering the original data recovery prohibitively expensive or technically impossible.

That's why I just urandom it. If I am paranoid I'll over write it with successive zeros and urandom data. That's about as you good as you can get.

If you want more protection, just use the best data wipe programs/devices America has to offer. A personal favorite of mine is the Mossberg 500 data wipe machine. It's very reasonably priced at around 150-500 dollars depending on the condition and features, and it only costs pennys per use. Even comes with a wood grain finish if you want.

Although I will have to warn you that it may lower the retail value of your harddrive a bit.