erase harddisk

[A-star]

I need some software so I can rapidly format my harddisk in a way that no data recovery is possible.
Anyone knows how to do this?

 

[Nothinman]

Fire.

You can't erase a hard disk in a way that noone can recover data from it, if they want it bad enough they will get it.

 

[randypj]

Purty close would be a program that writes ones and zeroes to the hard drive. Run it numerous times. I believe that is considered a "low level" format. My Dad has gotten one from one of the hard drive mfg. sites. I imagine there are freeware programs that will do this also. As, Nothinman suggested, I don't know if you can make it TOTALLY so no one can get the data......short of destroying the hard drive. I'm thinking some govt. agencies require hard drives to be drilled thru and/or melted down.
--Randy

 

[hudster]

can somebody explain why that is?...i mean, if you totally write over all the data, how can the old data be recovered? what, is a "residual image" of the previous data left over, or what?

 

[randypj]

hudster--A good question. I'd also like to know.

I do remember back in the days of cassette and open reel, that you could record over a tape, and sometimes hear some of what was originally recorded on it, still there (kinda soft, in the background). I always figgered it might be a diff in head alignment, or quality of tape deck. And......I know the reasoning for this on analogue is prolly totally different from the reasoning on hard drives.
--Randy

 

[Nothinman]

I don't know the specifics but something about the material the platters are made of retains the data for a very long time, even if you write over it many times it can still possibly be recovered although the process to do it is quite expensive.

 

[GigaCluster]

IBM wrote two utilities just for you:

Wipe (19k) -- writes zeroes to every sector of the hard drive up to 8 GB (can be used with any size hard drive, but only wipes up to 8 GB)
Zap (18k) -- writes zeroes to the first 128 sectors of the hard drive, overwriting the master boot sector and the first partition boot sector.