What is the best software for Completely Erasing A Hard Drive ???

Since end users can't low level format a drive, I just use something like gdisk to clear everything off the drive. This is not a secure erase....just one that clears it, so I can re-install the OS. Gdisk does have a switch to wipe the disk using various levels of depth that will do a pretty good job of making the data unrecoverable to anyone but the absolute professionals.
 
Gdisk is if you have Norton Ghost....which I would think by now most people working on systems should own.
 
djnes said:
Since end users can't low level format a drive, I just use something like gdisk to clear everything off the drive. This is not a secure erase....just one that clears it, so I can re-install the OS. Gdisk does have a switch to wipe the disk using various levels of depth that will do a pretty good job of making the data unrecoverable to anyone but the absolute professionals.
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You can visit the manufacturers website and find a utility to do a low level format.

I've low level formatted my Western Digitals many times.

Best of all the utilities are completely free!
 
Most drive manufacturers offer free utilities for doing this that are (fairly) specific to thier hardware. I would start there.


edit - kinda like l337zax just said
 
l337zax said:
You can visit the manufacturers website and find a utility to do a low level format.
No, you've written zeros to the drive. Low level formatting is a catch phrase that has been sticking around long past it's prime. No end user can low level format a drive. Read some of the recent threads about this.
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Gooogler said:
What is the best software for Completely Erasing A Hard Drive ???
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It depends on what you mean by completely erased. BCWipe will do a Department of Defense wipe of any file, folder, partition, drive, whatever.
 
When considering data destruction, it is important to choose a method that will yield acceptable results based on why you are wiping the drive. This can range from desiring to wipe the drive clean after a major FS corruption, wiping the drive clean before sale(extra attn. if its business related), or wiping the drive clean because of fear of law enforcement/industrial espionage. Its pointless to go to great lengths for casual wipage, and conversely, its dangerous to take wiping sensitive data casually.

For casual home use, or to clean a drive after serious corruption, just look on the manufacturer's website. All the major brands offer a bootable utility to zero/low level format a drive. Alternately, you could take a DOS disk, fdisk the drive, the full format it.

If you're in a professional office, where records are kept, client data stored, etc. then it makes sense to be careful whenever drives are transferred. This could involve a sale or disposal of equipment, or assigning an administrative laptop to a new user. In this case, there are many tools available to wipe the free space on the drive (where deleted files lay). I would recommend UltraWipe(free) or the shredder built into Norton AntiVirus professional starting in 2003. A low-level format/zeroing would also work in this situation.

The only time at which you should be concerned with destroying the MFT and overwriting several times is to safeguard against law enforcement, industrial espionage, dishonest sysadmins, or any other foe with similar capability. In such case, you'll need to overwrite several times. The best way to do this is to place the drive in a working computer as a slave. Perform a full format, as you would usually, then use UltraWipe(mentioned earlier), or PartitionMagic to do a secure erase. A secure erase can easily take one to two hours for larger drives.
 
M11 is absolutely correct. That's why I said that it depends what you mean by erase.
 
Also, a good software package that comes with some destruction utilities is PGP... the free version includes a utility with military strength erasing.
 
theDot said:
Also, a good software package that comes with some destruction utilities is PGP... the free version includes a utility with military strength erasing.
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Listen to this guy. If you feel comfortable with PGP and the command line, then this is also a good tool to have.

MIT PGP Mirror
 
M11 said:
Listen to this guy. If you feel comfortable with PGP and the command line, then this is also a good tool to have.

MIT PGP Mirror
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Actually I was just trying to remember (it's been a while since I've used PGP) if the free version includes a utility to take care of an entire drive. I know you can erase files/folders with the free version, though.

M11, I see you still have your title ;) ... When I saw Kyle at QuakeCon on Thursday, I introduced myself as "Short Dick Dot" ... first time I had met him. Good stuff.
 
I'm amazed at the number of people who all still think they can low-level format drives!
 
djnes said:
I'm amazed at the number of people who all still think they can low-level format drives!
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Sadly, I'm not.

What amuses me is how they will fight, tooth and nail, to be right.
 
Hard drive manufacturers have created for modern drives replacements for the old LLF utilities. They cause some confusion, because they are often still called "low-level format" utilities. The name is incorrect because, again, no utility that a user can run on a PC can LLF a modern drive. A more proper name for this sort of program is a zero-fill and diagnostic utility.
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http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatUtilities-c.html

:D
 
i say just format it with windows, i mean that gets the drive pretty damn near cleaned, if you really have data that is that important maybe you should just destroy the drive ;)
 
Hook it up to a linux machine, `dd` it. Several times. From /dev/urandom

There. Erased.
 
djnes said:
I'm amazed at the number of people who all still think they can low-level format drives!
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i got a motherboard that have a low-level format option when entering the BIOS.. is it real or not? its a pretty old PII board.
 
http://v4.livegate.net/wipe/

If heat is used for physical destruction, one must take into account the Curie point, where the material looses its ferromagnetic properties. E.g. the Curie point for pure iron (Fe) is above 750 degrees Celsius. Consider that the drive's case gives some protection against temperature changes. The Curie point must be exceeded on the platters directly for quite a long time.
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^ The only way to completely erase a hard drive
 
FanZ said:
i got a motherboard that have a low-level format option when entering the BIOS.. is it real or not? its a pretty old PII board.
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It's probably the usual zero fill utility. It's still useful to have in case you need to clear the hard drive and re-install the OS.
 
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