Any way to clear HDD if selling on

stewart.r@ntlwo · 24 Feb 2009 at 00:16

Any way to clear HDD if selling on? I'm selling this tower to a friend and if anything could clear some files........I was going just to format and re-install the OS....? he not into PC stuff but better safe.

yashiro · 24 Feb 2009 at 00:20

http://www.dban.org/

ChrisLX200 · 24 Feb 2009 at 00:20

Depends on how likely you think it is that someone will expend the effort to try and recover any deleted files, and how sensitive the information on the disk. Removing the partition, creating a new one, formating, and re-installing the OS would make it v.difficult to recover anything. Not impossible though, so if you need to zero the drive (overwrite the entire data area with a sequence of characters) then use a file shredder (Google for free utils as there are many). Be warned - the process takes a long time.

stewart.r@ntlwo · 24 Feb 2009 at 00:32

Cheers for the link....Dban have you used it? look great you put in the Cd and your off?

"Removing the partition, creating a new one, formating, and re-installing the OS would make it v.difficult" I think that would do considering he was asking what a USB port was.

JonJ678 · 24 Feb 2009 at 01:44

Similar to dban I suspect
I'd boot from a linux livecd, then run dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdaX bs=4k and wander off for a while

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdaX bs=4k
would work well too

MagicBoy · 24 Feb 2009 at 01:50

http://www.killdisk.com/

IAmATeaf · 24 Feb 2009 at 09:23

MagicBoy said:
http://www.killdisk.com/

^

Tis what I use, download an eval copy, it will only allow the use of a single overwrite pattern but should be good enough.

WJA96 · 24 Feb 2009 at 23:37

dBan is very good indeed. Totally free, and you make a boot floppy or CD and it does it all for you. As has been mentioned above, a big HDD (320gb+) can take a couple of days to zero out completely. An 80Gb drive I left running on the default settings took 16 hours.