A Good Disk Wiper

[hozdaman]

I just bought 15 computers from a health clinic. The deal I made with the owner was that I would make sure the drives were wiped clean thoroughly (more thorough than a reformat). Is there a program that will do this?

Thanks

 

[M0rph3u5]

http://www.diskwipe.org/
http://www.dban.org/
i recomend u dban

 

[creatfire]

The best option would be "secure erase" built into every hard drive and motherboard (if its newish).

check out "10 Things About Hard Drives Part 1/6" on youtube to see what I am talking about.

dban does not remove everything off the drive (bad sectors will remain), is not quick at all (15 computers will take a long time) and you do not have to send the drives out to be verified clean.

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml this is where you can get it... you might have to know some dos commands to use it.

 

[ITMAN]

google Killdisk i use it, brilliant and simple.........

 

[tkrabec]

My personal recommendation is if you are re-using a disk internally then wipe/sanitize it and re-use it. If you're sending the machine out of the organization and it may have sensitive data, wipe/sanitize then destroy the disk. Disks are cheap in comparison to the costs of explaining how/why data got out of your company.

 

[PatrickB]

Secure Erase is the way to go. This program comes from the the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California San Diego.

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

Q: Is secure erase approved for government security?

A: Secure erase has been approved by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), Computer Security Center

Summary: user data is left on disk drives removed from computers and storage systems, creating a data security vulnerability that many users are unaware of. Recent Federal and state laws requiring secure erasure of user data expose companies to fines of $250,000 and responsible parties to imprisonment for 10 years.

Complete eradication of user data off drives can be accomplished by running data Secure Erasure utilities such as the freeware "HDDerase" downloadable here. It executes the Federally-approved (NIST 800-88) Secure Erase command in the ATA ANSI standard, which is implemented in all recent ATA drives greater than 15-20 GB. A similar command in the SCSI ANSI standard is optional and not yet implemented in drives tested. Normal Secure Erase takes 30-60 minutes to complete. Some ATA drives also implement the standard Enhanced Secure Erase command that takes only milliseconds to complete.

-- Patrick B.

 

[Alan22]

My personal recommendation is if you are re-using a disk internally then wipe/sanitize it and re-use it. If you're sending the machine out of the organization and it may have sensitive data, wipe/sanitize then destroy the disk. Disks are cheap in comparison to the costs of explaining how/why data got out of your company.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[darren1270]

google Killdisk i use it, brilliant and simple.........

Agrees with Killdisk... I use it all the time.... Free version only does one pass though.

 

[MobileTechie]

The only really complete s/w disk wipers are the ones that use the ATA erase commands. Secure Erase as mentioned does this as does the free HDDErase (they might even be the same app underneath, not sure). AFAIK KillDisk does not.

All the others miss out on wiping reallocated sectors. This could be a microscopic amount of data or it could be something more meaningful.

The number of wipes and patterns have proven not to be relevant on modern disks. The way the data is written and the density is such that any kind of overwriting is fine. No need for 5 passes of random patterns.

 

[steve51]

I personally use Webroot windows bleach, you have a choice of one to four passes with four being the most secure and the most time consuming.