software to wipe a hard drive securely

sare^baw's · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:31

im looking for a windows based program to wipe a hard drive clean and no data can be recovered, i have dban drive wipe but it runs in dos and takes ages so that would mean my pc is unusable while wiping the drives.

any suggestions

Paul91 · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:43

It's not possible to use the hard drive, while wiping it clean (I think)... how you can you use something that's being deleted?

File Shredder can remove files so you can't recover them, though.

Tomsk · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:49

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

MagicBoy · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:49

I suspect he wants to wipe a secondary drive. I'm not aware of any Windows apps that can do this. We use Active@ Killdisk at work, which boots off a CD into DOS.

Tried google?

sare^baw's · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:51

Paul91 said:
It's not possible to use the hard drive, while wiping it clean (I think)... how you can you use something that's being deleted?

File Shredder can remove files so you can't recover them, though.

i thought there was programs that wipe the free space on your hard drive inc the system drive.

also i want to wipe seperate hard drives that had personal data on them at one time. so file shredder no good.

Paul91 · 12 Jan 2008 at 15:59

sare^baw's said:
i thought there was programs that wipe the free space on your hard drive inc the system drive.

also i want to wipe seperate hard drives that had personal data on them at one time. so file shredder no good.

There are programs available, they usually run in a DOS mode though.

HarryPainful · 12 Jan 2008 at 17:08

Its not possible to totally erase anything off a hard drive unless you destroy it.

dban is probably the closest your going to get outside of smashing it up.

oldbag · 12 Jan 2008 at 17:11

dban's boot and nuke will do it.

sare^baw's · 12 Jan 2008 at 17:11

HarryPainful said:
Its not possible to totally erase anything off a hard drive unless you destroy it.

dban is probably the closest your going to get outside of smashing it up.

well put lol, ok guys thanks for the help ill mayber just have to stick to dban so no pc for me for a while :rolleyes:

oddjob62 · 12 Jan 2008 at 17:18

MagicBoy said:
I suspect he wants to wipe a secondary drive. I'm not aware of any Windows apps that can do this. We use Active@ Killdisk at work, which boots off a CD into DOS.

Tried google?

Killdisk has a Win version that can be run in windows and works just as well.

Tomsk · 12 Jan 2008 at 17:32

sare^baw's said:
well put lol, ok guys thanks for the help ill mayber just have to stick to dban so no pc for me for a while

This does it in Windows.

Tomsk said:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

tang0 · 12 Jan 2008 at 19:33

The best tool to use is dban

pumaz · 12 Jan 2008 at 20:01

Dban is good but i had allot of trouble running it on newer systems, seems the newer your system the slower it is and in some case it wouldn't work at all.

I tried Killdisk which is much the same as dban but with fewer options and that worked well. But if your after deleting files you could always use eraser. Eraser also as an option to wipe free space, so if you have already deleted something you could use eraser to make sure it can't be recovered.

IAmATeaf · 12 Jan 2008 at 20:07

Use KillDisk personally, if you have another PC just take the drive out, boot up off the boot floppy and leave it in the corner to do it's job.

swinnie · 12 Jan 2008 at 20:15

sare^baw's said:
well put lol, ok guys thanks for the help ill mayber just have to stick to dban so no pc for me for a while

Run it over night thats what i do.