Storage

Five tools that ensure your personal information is securely erased

By // October 10, 2012, 4:27 AM PST

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  • Active Kill Disk 1

    This screenshot gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.

    When 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.

    Active@Kill Disk – Hard Drive Eraser

    Active@ Kill Disk – 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Active Kill Disk 2

    Although 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Eraser 1

    Eraser

    Eraser 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Eraser 2

    This 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Shredit 1

    Shredit for Windows

    Shredit 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Shredit 2

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

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Shredit 3

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Disk Wipe 1

    Disk Wipe

    Disk 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • Disk Wipe 2

    The 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • DBAN 1

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

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • DBAN 2

    Although 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.

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

  • DBAN 3

    Also read:

    Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

Active Kill Disk 1

This screenshot gallery is also available as a post in the Five Apps Blog.

When 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.

Active@Kill Disk – Hard Drive Eraser

Active@ Kill Disk – 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.

Images by Brien Posey for TechRepublic

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Storage Hardware Data Centers Networking Innovation Big Data Analytics Security