Wiping hard drive

mtennant

My pc is only 2 months old, bought from Dell. It was not working and Dell has sent me a new hard drive. Meantime the computer started operating again before I installed the new hard drive.

My problem is that Dell wants me to install the new hard drive and return the old one. I want to wipe out all the information on the old hard drive before returning it to Dell so that I know that my private information is not out there for someone to access easily.

What programme will ensure that the hard drive is wiped properly with nothing remaining? Dell insists on receiving the old hard drive or returniing the new one. My preference would be to smash the drive but obviously I cannot as the machine is still under warranty and I do not want to jeopardise my guarantee.

Any ideas as to a suitable "wiping" programme would be appreciated.

robt_2

http://dban.sourceforge.net/
Considered one of the best

DatabaseError

a hard drive is about 3 1/2" x 5", are you sure dell sent you one of those? the larger, often beige box is either a computer or a base unit

isofa

tonyhague wrote: »

a hard drive is about 3 1/2" x 5", are you sure dell sent you one of those? the larger, often beige box is either a computer or a base unit

Just reading the OPs post it's clear they are talking about the hard drive and not the main computer unit...

...and if you missed the clue "meantime the computer started operating again before I installed the new hard drive."

DBAN is the way to go, as per robt's recommendation

Blacksheep1979

yup dban or if you have any old linux boot cd about (or run linux) then just boot up and run

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda or /dev/sda (whatever your hard drive comes up under /dev (will be something like the above)