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Hard Drive Erasing

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by mark110a

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Can anyone recommend a program that i can use to remove all data from a hard drive. leaving it in a state where there is no readable data on the drive no matter what is used to try and recover data (goverment clean).

I have purchased second hand drives in the past so say blank but found data still on the drive.
I am looking for a program that will give an as new data free drive)

14 replies

by d_v ant

My personal favoriteis 200 grit sandpaper applied directly to the platters.......

by mark110a

I need constructive answers. along this line you cound use a road roller and a blow tourch

by tamj123

you need to low level format your hard drive. check the drive manufacturer and download such an utility from its website. Every drive manufacturer provides just such a utility.

by thechas

There is NO way to clean a drive so that data is totally un-recoverable.

Even with the write over software, labs have been able to recover data with microscopic examination of the platter.

The software packages that clean the drive to DOD standards do make it so that data recovery software won't recover files. (at least at this time)

The only way to prevent ANY chance of data recovery is to physically destroy the platters.

Chas

by thechas

There are 3 erasure utilities on the Ultimate Boot CD:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Still, it depends on how valuable the data on the drive is, or to what lengths someone might be willing to go to recover the data.

If the data is not that valuable or sensitive, go ahead and use 1 of the utilities.
Then to go a step further, change the partition structure on the drive at least twice. Finish by deleting ALL partitions.
The more that you do, the harder it is to recover files from the drive.

However, if the data is very valuable, or sensitive, I would destroy the drive.

Chas

by csmith

Zero filling will restore the drive to its factory new state, but data is still recoverable because of head miscalibration/drift/toleranceshifts.
If the data is critical, the drive must be destroyed or held (The "Just add more drives, and keep the old ones as well.", solution.)

After a govt. standard wipe, load lots of ProCD Photos. (126Meg each photgraph) That overwrites almost every sector, and it "looks like you forget to erase the drive".
Good luck.
Regards, Chris

by matthew

There is a program called killdisk that all the corparations and FBI and what not use to erase all data from the hard drive and make it untracable.
It works like a bootable cd,all you need to do is follow the instructions,very simple,child could do it!

by boli

if you have an OEM copy of windows or a system builder pack then it has an OEM DOS boot floppy disk thing. it has a program called oformat which completly erases your hard drive and leaves no trace,
when you have the disk in dos type:

Oformat c:/u

this is an unconditional format which leaves no trace...

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