Safest way to wipe a HDD

[box]

I've just upgraded my IDE drive to a couple of SATA ones running in RAID 0. I have someone interested in purchasing the old one, but am uncertain of how to securely wipe everything off it. Will formatting and partitioning it be enough, or will the data still be recoverable? Remember, this hard drive has to still be useable, so no crazy ways to destroy a hard drive please!

Any ideas are appreciated.

Tim

 

[smids]

You want to use a utility which writes zeroes to the drive.

Something like Kill disk - http://www.killdisk.com/

 

[Explicit]

Forget everything else, there is only one solution:

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/drivecleanser/

Run the Peter Gutman 35 pass algorithm on it

Even the Bruce Schneier 7 pass is good.

 

[smids]

Killdisk uses Gutmann's algorithm.

 

[Explicit]

Killdisk uses Gutmann's algorithm.

All is well then

Acronis has a lot more algorithm options though, which is handy if you don't want to wait ages for gutmann to do its job. Schneier is good enough.

EDIT: Oh, and you can make custom algorithms too

 

[smids]

All is well then

Acronis has a lot more algorithm options though, which is handy if you don't want to wait ages for gutmann to do its job. Schneier is good enough.

The only reason I recommend Killdisk over the Acronis though is because it is free and doesn't require registration for the demo version. For the average end-user, a kill disk will suffice.

It's handy to know about that Acronis one though, I didn't know they had a wiper.

 

[Explicit]

The only reason I recommend Killdisk over the Acronis though is because it is free and doesn't require registration for the demo version. For the average end-user, a kill disk will suffice.

That's a valid point, nothing beats free of charge apps

 

[box]

Cheers for the help guys. I'll check that prog out.

Tim

 

[Mr Bulbous]

Killdisk uses Gutmann's algorithm.

Only on the professional version, and that's not free.