Best free software to wipe a hard drive?

Soldato
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24 Jul 2004
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Hi,

I have an external hard drive I'd like to give to the charity shop. It's got some of my old backups on it. Do you know of any decent free software that will allow me to completely erase the drive?

Cheers.

(I did try the sticky and came across 'Clean Disk Security' but it didn't do the job.)
 
Killdisk?

http://how-to-erase-hard-drive.com/

I don't know if it's good or bad but I used it when I upgraded my computer and ditched the old one. I ran Killdisk, took the HDD drive out, smashed it with a hammer and disposed of it within my household waste!
 
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Eraser is the go to deletion too for files on a running system, dban is to go to for wiping entire hard drive in the easiest way possible. I want to say idiot proof - but I know people will select to wrong drive if I do.
 
Eraser is the go to deletion too for files on a running system, dban is to go to for wiping entire hard drive in the easiest way possible. I want to say idiot proof - but I know people will select to wrong drive if I do.

+1 Dban is excellent but personally if it were my PC I'd disconnect all drives I don't want to wipe - just in case ;)
 
If you have Windows 7 or Vista (not XP or before though), simply issuing the command "format x: /fs:NTFS" (where x is your external drive letter) will put your data beyond any possibility of recovery.

If you'll feel happier using a third-party app to do multiple random overwrites, knock yourself out, but it's completely unnecessary and really just a waste of time. :)
 
Lots of recommendations for DBAN, which will certainly do the job, but don't forget it has to be run from a boot disk, which obviously means rebooting your PC and taking it offline for the time it takes to complete the overwrite(s) (however many of those you choose to perform). It's probably a bit more aggravation than really necessary in the case of an external HDD as per the OP.
 
Lots of recommendations for DBAN, which will certainly do the job, but don't forget it has to be run from a boot disk, which obviously means rebooting your PC and taking it offline for the time it takes to complete the overwrite(s) (however many of those you choose to perform). It's probably a bit more aggravation than really necessary in the case of an external HDD as per the OP.
Would be OK if its a laptop to have its hard disk erased? Colleague of mine wants to donate some of her old laptops to charity but wants to wipe the disk first. Can't imagine there'd be any problems using DBAN on the boot disk in this instance?
 
Would be OK if its a laptop to have its hard disk erased? Colleague of mine wants to donate some of her old laptops to charity but wants to wipe the disk first. Can't imagine there'd be any problems using DBAN on the boot disk in this instance?
No, no problems at all, it was really just the convenience aspect from the OP's point of view I was thinking about, assuming he's using his own main PC to wipe his external HDD. It's not an issue if you're dealing with a single internal drive such as you'd find in a laptop, as you'd have to boot from a different medium to wipe it and/or reinstall an OS in any case.
 
No, no problems at all, it was really just the convenience aspect from the OP's point of view I was thinking about, assuming he's using his own main PC to wipe his external HDD. It's not an issue if you're dealing with a single internal drive such as you'd find in a laptop, as you'd have to boot from a different medium to wipe it and/or reinstall an OS in any case.
Nice one skipper! :)
 
Formatting is not enough to ensure data cannot be recovered. DBAN does more than just a basic format.

FDISK does not just format, it removes the actual partition data.

Plus, there is something here called Paranoia.

Once you format a disk, 99.9% of all people will simply NOT be able to get the old data back. The people that can recover this wont really give a stuff about what people like you or I have on their Drives.

Unless of course you have kiddie stuff on there and you want to hide your tracks?
 
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