Secure wiping a hard drive and other hard drive utilities?

sastusbulbas · 13 Jun 2010 at 14:22

Hi all,

I have few old drives I want to secure erase before passing on, and a couple I want to just secure erase and use elsewhere for storage as I am planning on buying a couple of smaller OS drives.

What free software do people recommend for secure HD erasing?

Is there any other free software HD utilities for checking performance and that drives are fault free etc.

Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

Beerbaron · 13 Jun 2010 at 14:26

http://www.diskwipe.org/

tntcoder · 13 Jun 2010 at 14:36

DBAN - http://www.dban.org/

Burn to cd -> boot cd -> secure wipe -> profit

ncjok · 13 Jun 2010 at 15:42

sastusbulbas said:
I have few old drives I want to secure erase...

Secure Erase

Data Sanitization PDF said:
Secure erase is built into the hard disk drive itself and thus is far less susceptible to malicious software attack than external software utilities.

The SE command is implemented in all ATA interface drives manufactured after 2001 (drives with capacities greater than 15 GB), according to testing by CMRR. A standardized internal secure erase command also exists for SCSI drives, but is optional and not currently implemented in SCSI drives tested.

HDDErase ReadMe said:
Q: Can HDDerase.exe be used to erase my onboard or externally connected (USB, etc.) SATA drives?

A: Yes, but some BIOS configuration may be required. Since HDDerase.exe only detects drives on the primary and secondary IDE channels (ports 01F0-01F7 and 0170-0177) the BIOS must be configured so that the SATA drive is detected one of these channels. For onboard SATA drives this can be done by switching the SATA drive from "enhanced mode" to "compatibility mode" in BIOS (compatibility mode is sometimes called "native mode" or "IDE mode").

SourChipmunk · 14 Jun 2010 at 16:24

tntcoder said:
DBAN - http://www.dban.org/

Burn to cd -> boot cd -> secure wipe -> profit

The only real choice.

AbsenceJam · 14 Jun 2010 at 16:37

Just do a full format in W7 as from Vista onwards it also zero fills the drive. Alternatively Secure Erase or KillDisk.
You don't need any nonsense multi-pass random data thing by the way.

Use HDTune or the manufacturer utilities to do a full scan to check for bad sectors.

Smit · 14 Jun 2010 at 17:07

I always used KillDisk which seems to work fine.

VaderDSL · 14 Jun 2010 at 17:08

DBAN here as well, accept no substitutes

Raumarik · 14 Jun 2010 at 17:38

DBAN, does the job nicely.

K.C. Leblanc · 14 Jun 2010 at 17:48

tntcoder said:
DBAN - http://www.dban.org/

Burn to cd -> boot cd -> secure wipe -> profit

It's included on this. With quite a few other handy widgets.

mrk · 14 Jun 2010 at 18:53

Widgets?

Raumarik · 14 Jun 2010 at 19:28

K.C. Leblanc said:
It's included on this. With quite a few other handy widgets.

If your wiping a few though a DBAN CD boots faster and requires less interaction to get the job done. UBCD is damn handy though