How do I wipe a Hard Drive

andy2004

active killdisk is quick used it on a 1.5tb drive, and NON of the data on it was recoverable, took a couple of hours though, overwriting the data will wipe the drive clean, without the chance and with no matter what recovery program you get, or if you sent the drive away to get it recovered would any one be able to get it back.
killdisk in its basic forms writes 0 to every single cluster on the hard drive.

shaun_from_Africa

You cannot remove everything from a hard drive. Anyone with even the basic
computing skills can bring it back

In which case, here's a challenge for you.

Give me an address to send you something (doesn't have to be a personal address, a work one, or a friends one will do fine).

I will send you a floppy disk which I put my phone number on, but before sending it to you I will delete all the info on it, and then run Cyberscrub to overwrite the disk. (I won't use the most secure setting which is a 35 write overpass, but just a mid range 7 overpass one just to make it easier for you).

As anyone with "basic computer skills" can recover this info, I will expect a call from you within a day or two. (or if you don't want to call me, you have my full permission to post my number on this thread)

Spank

You still use floppys?

santer_2

With the price of hard drives, keep your drive, put a new one in and then no one needs to worry

You can use it in a caddy or add it to your new PC

shaun_from_Africa

You still use floppys?

Not personally, but we still have some stuff at work that uses them.
high tech, extremely expensive and still with a floppy drive. (that's a floppy sticking out of the bottom)

cit_k

Spank wrote: »

You still use floppys?

I hope to upgrade from cassette tape to these wonderful floppies one day.

paddyrg

If it's just for a family member you don't need it to have holes through the drive, or even remove it - a full/deep format or using a free data shredder is plentyplenty for most people, especially for family who aren't actively going to try to screw you over.

If it's going on ebay, remove the drive and put it in a caddy to use as an external hard drive/extra storage :-)

googler

As was said, why destroy a perfectly good drive?

Buy one exactly the same as the current one, swap them, and keep the old one yourself in a caddy to use as backup or extra storage. Give the computer to the family member with the blank, new drive in it.

That's as secure as anything.

shaun_from_Africa

Don't forget that i many cases, by removing the HDD you may be effectively writing off the entire computer as you it could be financial unviable for someone to reuse.

It's easy and cheap enough for someone to fit another HDD, but the operating system (if they want to use windows) is a different matter.
To do it legally, they would either need to already own a multiuser licenced version of windows, or to buy a full retial copy of this.

st999

What private info do you have on your hard drive that would make it worth someone's while to try and recover it?