How do I completely erase my HD?

GSDog

GSDog

GSDog

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Joined
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Hi all, I am considering selling my huge, bulky desktop PC and buying a laptop, because I dont play games anymore and my brother has just got a wireless network up and running. How do I completely erase my HD so its impossible for anyone to get any personal/private info from it? :confused:
 
I think this would be better in the HDD forum. There is a few posts on there that tell you how to do it if you do a search, there are a few free dos based erasers and a windows based eraser called Eraser. Type HDD eraser into google and it'll prolly find it, i think its about a tenner.

HTH

Mark
 
well you can't make it impossible that anyone will read it - though if you do it enough times you can make it very unlikely
(it is hard to know exactly how many as I dont think a lot of this information is public)

There was some test (named after someone I can't remember) that was supposed to be the magic cure and I think 14 times was the magic number (it also varied the pattern it wrote), however this was distorted by the internet and not really what he meant.

Complete removal of information is impossible other than physical destruction of the drive all you can do is make it more difficult
 
The Peter Gutmann method is 35 times IIRC, this is soposed to leave it impossible to recover any data at all, allthough im sure the military has secret ways to recover stuff if they want to. overwriting the hdd once with zeros will stop 99.99% of people recovering your data, this you can do with your hdd's tools if it has any, my seagate hdd has some tools to do this.

Mark
 
What brand of hard disk? Many of the manufacture's Diagnostics disks will also allow you to write patterns of zeros across the drive. Do this three or four times and you'll remove most of the data from all but the most stubborn of people. (If you are worried about "illegal" data on the drives, then run these 10 times or so...)

Once you have done your "scrub", you can then try pointing disk recovery software at it. Partition recovery software from Active has often worked for me to recover data from old hard disks which were long deleted....

http://www.killdisk.com/eraser.htm
http://www.partition-recovery.com/features.htm

The short demos should be enough. I have also showed a customer how to use the 30 day demo of eraser to wipe out the stuff his kid had been doing on his PC. :)


Also there is a simple way of doing this. Get a huge, legal file that you can multiply copy across the drive many times. I know someone who used to "scrub" his hard disk by copying an old Windows install across the disk many times until it was jammed full. This also helps to mess with any remenents of the old data..... :)
 
MAllen said:
Get a huge, legal file that you can multiply copy across the drive many times.
Click to expand...


but if you do it this way be aware that some of the prior data wont get overwritten, specifically the data (or parts of data) that reside in what are now file slacks of the new files.
 
MrWhippy said:
but if you do it this way be aware that some of the prior data wont get overwritten, specifically the data (or parts of data) that reside in what are now file slacks of the new files.
Click to expand...
True... but it will make a hell of a mess of the data that is there. Especially if this messy copy is defragged as well.

Much better to use the tools though... :)
 
LewisStuart said:
hammer - sledge.jpg


Wooden handle - 5 times

Yellow handle - once only :D
Click to expand...

:D nice to see someone into hardcore on these forums :cool:
 
jaxon said:
:D nice to see someone into hardcore on these forums :cool:
Click to expand...
It's a tried and tested method of securing the data on a hard disk. I have used this method with a few of my customers now who wanted to make sure no one could steal data from their old hard disk.

Dropping disks from a 5th floor window also works well..... I would challenge any data recovery firm to get the data back from that hard disk. (They would have to start by collecting the parts from the car park.... LOL :D)

** WARNING - Invalidates Warrenty on Hard Disk. ** :cool:
 
i know a way to make your original data complete un recoverable. if u have a second drice put windows on it. add the second drive to be erased as your second drive.. i personally use emule. put the temp file on your second drive thie one that needs erasure. just start downloading iso and zip's rar's over and over. after doing this for a week there is not a chance in hell of anything being recovered.
 
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