First time wiping drive for sale.

arc@css

arc@css

arc@css

Caporegime
Joined
8 Nov 2008
Posts
29,404
Hi,

I have one or two spare drives I was thinking of cleaning up before selling, and from having read a bit more it seems that one of the most highly recommended is Dban. I burnt the files successfully to disk yesterday and, if I understand rightly, you then set the bios to be boot from CD, which I did. Only nothing happened, so I simply booted to desktop and then tried to access the disk, which it wouldn't let me do.

Where am I going wrong? Are there any other, better alternatives out there? Advice and experiences most welcome. Thanks. :)
 
Did you burn it as an image file ok? It's an ISO file so try using the likes of ImgBurn to burn the file to disk and then try booting your system with it. Make sure you disconnect your own system HDD and have only the one for wiping connected just in case.
 
Vista onwards just full format the disk. Or there's software like Active Killdisk etc.
Linux dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

You don't need to use DBAN or anything, you can do it from within the OS. A simple pass of zeros makes recovery of anything impossible.
 
Plug the drive into your PC, download CCleaner which has Drive Wiper under Tools which will do a zero-fill on the drive.
 
andy_mk3 said:
Plug the drive into your PC, download CCleaner which has Drive Wiper under Tools which will do a zero-fill on the drive.
Click to expand...

Well screw down my nipple nuts and send me to Alaska! I never even noticed that and have been using CCleaner for as long as I can remember, thanks for pointing this out! I have been using Active Kill Disk for the most part along with Dban in case I need to just insert a disk rather than pulling the drive out but I have a HDD dock on order to sort out that :D

Stoner81.
 
andy_mk3 said:
Plug the drive into your PC, download CCleaner which has Drive Wiper under Tools which will do a zero-fill on the drive.
Click to expand...

When I select the drive to be wiped, C, the box goes grey so I can't check it. I am only allowed to select 'free space only'. Do you have to pay to be able to fully use Driver Wiper? Also, would this be as effective for permanent data removal as Dban, Killdisk, Erase...or any other heavy duty application that I haven't listed / not aware of?
 
From your OP it sounded like you had some old drives you had to wipe :p As above you can't wipe a disk you are booting from.

To wipe it that way then use active@killdisk, great little app for free. Just boot from it off a CD/Pendrive and leave it to it. It's what I used before selling my 1TB F3 drive on here.
 
panyan said:
you cant wipe a disk you are booting from :)
Click to expand...

Yes, I appreciate that. I guess I was placing CCleaner on the same pedestal as Dban. I realise now they work differently. :)

I'm sure I'm still doing something wrong with burning an ISO image to disk. I download Dban, but when I go to select what 'path to image to be converted' (I'm trying out CDburnerXP atm), upon selecting downloads for me to click on Dban, nothing comes up. It's as if I haven't downloaded anything. Yet, if I run simply click 'Computer / Downloads ' I see it amongst other downloads. :confused:
 
Either ImgBurn or Poweriso. There both free and really easy to use. It's just a case of double clicking the .iso within explorer, it opens in poweriso for example and then you click burn>ok. That's all there is to it.

However. If you haven't already, connect your hard drives you are selling into the pc you are using and then just use CCleaner as suggested. They will show up as drive D: and E: then you are good to go
 
In the end I sorted Dban out, worked fine. Maybe overkill, I don't know. I selected 'autonuke' which was iirc Dod short = 3 passes, took about one hour and forty five mins. Thanks for the advice everyone, plenty of resources for future use. :)

Just thought I'd mention, I read somewhere that Gutmann himself said that the 35 pass run was really not needed at all, and that less passes should be adequate. The main reason I wanted to be sure of no data recovery was the obvious credit card / bank details, Steam, emails, and also in my case a book I wrote. It's only my first, but nevertheless I didn't want anyone to get their hands on any material.
 
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arc@css said:
In the end I sorted Dban out, worked fine. Maybe overkill, I don't know. I selected 'autonuke' which was iirc Dod short = 3 passes, took about one hour and forty five mins. Thanks for the advice everyone, plenty of resources for future use. :)

Just thought I'd mention, I read somewhere that Gutmann himself said that the 35 pass run was really not needed at all, and that less passes should be adequate. The main reason I wanted to be sure of no data recovery was the obvious credit card / bank details, Steam, emails, and also in my case a book I wrote. It's only my first but nevertheless I didn't want anyone to get their hands on any material.
Click to expand...

Nothing more than a single pass of anything is needed. More passes and random data are just a waste of time. One lot of zero's and it's IMPOSSIBLE to recover anything.
 
AbsenceJam said:
Nothing more than a single pass of anything is needed. More passes and random data are just a waste of time. One lot of zero's and it's IMPOSSIBLE to recover anything.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks, I'll remember that. Just got one more drive to do, an old 7200 rpm, so I'll look at leaving it to run just the one pass. :)
 
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