How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

Yeah, a strong magnet won't. It's pretty amazing, really - I've seen some interesting examples on TV of things that you would expect to be demagnetized by a high powered magnet that just keep on working.

It depends on how paranoid you are about the old data. Putting the drive into a machine and simply performing an unconditional format would be enough for most. Otherwise, anything that you can do to destroy the disk physically (open the case, bend the platters, whatever) would be the near-ultimate.

I want to agree with leo it is all about how paranoid you are. If you know that you have something on there you shouldn't. Or are worried about someone finding it out. Then my advice is just get a 5 puond sledge hammer from home depot and beat the living crap out of it on the side walk. However if you just want to donate a computer. Get partition magic 8 and delete the partitions and recreate them, then use a 98 boot disc to format the drive and format it 5 times in a row. If anyone can recover your data after that, they worked hard enough for it I say let them have it. In all seriousness most people don't know how to access the data on their computer that wasn't erased. So don't freak out I am the lead PC Tech for a Circuit City located in Countryside,IL. You would be amazed at how little the average person knows. Data Retrieval is not even in there vocabulary. So format it or smash it if you are that worried, Otherwise you could leave everything on there and for the most part no one would find anything anyways.

Just my opinion, I could be wrong

Paul
PC Tech

Both 'DriveScrubber' and 'KillDisk' have functional demos for download- the file you download creates a bootable floppy disk that will overwrite the entire surface of whatever drive you choose-erasing data, partitions, etc. You would then have to create and format a new partition. It would take special hardware to retrieve any data after that. Takes about 2-1/2 minutes per GB on an average HD/machine.

IBM has a free (Anyone can download and use it) software program that you can download from their website called "IBM(R) Secure Data Disposal (SDD) Version 1.2.". It runs from a boot disk/CD, and a will wipe out your drive by copying, sectory by sector, track by track, random data onto the hard drive. It will overwrite everything that is there, as many times as you want. So there would be no chance of someone every reading what was on your disk drive.
Caveat - doesn't work with RAID systems very well, since it needs drivers to read them.

Bill Tkach
System Administrator

format it several times, wipe it several times then , and then smash it

I would recommend using a Overwriting software.

That's what Leo should have mention is Erase a hard drive using a Boot-Up Hard Drive Erasing Software (like Active Killdisk, etc etc.), erase it Guttmann method, then erase it with other methods, then when your done you erase with One Pass Zeros so it looks like you never erased, or written data.

Then after that Reformat, then install the Operating System (95,98,XP,2000,2003,Vista) not to mention you overwite when you reinstall your Operating System too.

Now you know how to erase everything without destroying the hard drive. I need to have a data erasing service. Maybe computer repair shops can have a erasing service and make some $$$.

Another way to destroy data from recovery is to put all data in a (Strong 128-Bit) or more encrypted container and reformat-it because you can recover files but never destroyed strong encrypted files from a deleted encrypted container. That's the reason why Strong Cryptology is Banned in certain countries.

Don't use magnets, don't destroy you Hard drive. It's not nessisary.

I inadvertently formatted my hard drive with the system rescue disk. THE GEEK SQUAD assures me they can have all my photos and videos rescued by a level three retrieval.

A level 2 is $500, but a level three in a clean room is $1500. I this even possible, or am I getting ripped off?

My request to format the hard drive is met with "Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another porcess" I have nothing else open or running. Any idea why I am getting this response?

You have Windows running - windows has the volume in use.

What about tools designed to permanently erase files from hard drive? There's no mention of them here.

To post a comment on "How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?", please return to that article's main page.