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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.
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.
It depends on what you mean by completely erased. BCWipe will do a Department of Defense wipe of any file, folder, partition, drive, whatever.Gooogler said:What is the best software for Completely Erasing A Hard Drive ???
Listen to this guy. If you feel comfortable with PGP and the command line, then this is also a good tool to have.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.
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
Sadly, I'm not.djnes said:I'm amazed at the number of people who all still think they can low-level format drives!
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.
djnes said:I'm amazed at the number of people who all still think they can low-level format drives!
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.
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.
prime said:^ The only way to completely erase a hard drive