Five tools that ensure your personal information is securely erased

By Brien Posey October 10, 2012, 4:12 AM PDT

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Five tools that ensure your personal information is securely erased

Active Kill Disk 1

ntThis screenshot gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.
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ntWhen it comes to disposing of old hard drives, simply erasing your files or reformatting the drive alone is not enough to ensure your privacy. In this age of rampant ID theft, it is more important than ever to ensure that your personal information is securely removed from all hard disks. That being the case, I decided to create a list of five utilities for securely erasing and formatting old hard drives.

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ntActive@Kill Disk u2013 Hard Drive Eraser

ntActive@ Kill Disk u2013 Hard Drive Eraser is a free utility for securely erasing a hard drive. More importantly, this utility adheres to United States Department of Defense standards (DoD 5220.22M) for hard disk data removal.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Active Kill Disk 2

ntAlthough some might consider it to be hokey, I especially liked the certificate feature. When a hard disk has been erased, the software generates a certificate that you can print as a way of proving that the disk has been securely erased.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Eraser 1

ntEraser

ntEraser from Heidi Computers, is another free utility for securely erasing data from a hard disk. The most interesting thing about this utility is that it provides several different methods for overwriting data, based on a number of different standards. You can even define your own method for overwriting data.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Eraser 2

ntThis utility allows you to securely erase specific files, folders, unused disk space, or even the recycle bin. Furthermore, erase operations can be run manually or scheduled.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Shredit 1

ntShredit for Windows

ntShredit for Windows is a privacy application that is designed to securely erase individual files, free space, or entire hard drives. The software lets you pick the write pattern and the number of writes. A number of different government standards are supported.

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Shredit 2

ntShredit for Windows costs $24.95 for the download version or $34.95 for the CD-ROM version.

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Shredit 3

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Disk Wipe 1

ntDisk Wipe

ntDisk Wipe is a free utility for wiping data from a hard disk in a secure manner. Like Eraser, Disk Wipe includes a number of different algorithms, including DoD 5220-22.M, and Peter Guttman.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Disk Wipe 2

ntThe really nice thing about this utility is that it is portable, so you don’t have to install it to be able to use it. Furthermore, Disk Wipe works on more than just hard drives. It can also be used to securely wipe USB flash drives and SD cards.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

DBAN 1

ntDarik’s Boot and Nuke is a free, open source utility for securely erasing hard drives.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

DBAN 2

ntAlthough this utility is designed to be secure and effective, the author does not explicitly guarantee that data is completely unrecoverable and there is no support for this application.

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

DBAN 3

ntAlso read:

nttVideo: How to wipe a hard disk with DBAN

nttThree methods for erasing data securely from an iOS device

nttFive apps to wipe data from your Android phone

ntImages by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

By Brien Posey

* 1988 - Started teaching myself about computers \ * 1992 - Mainframe programmer for an insurance company \ * 1993 - Network Administrator for a different insurance company \ * 1996 - Author for The Cobb Group \ * 1998 - Network Administrator

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