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

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tried "format/c" - the system cannot find the path speicified - now what

Posted by: Sharon Beckham at June 1, 2008 3:23 PM

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There's a space between format and /c.

Leo

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Posted by: Leo at June 1, 2008 8:22 PM

very nice article about how to erase your hard drive permanently. formatting can erase disk but not permanently as you said data recovery software recover these files. SO in this situation you could try drive wipe software which rewrite and overwrite the data by special algorithm so that it couldn't be recovered by any recovery software.

More information: http://www.drive-wipe.com

Posted by: vish at June 5, 2008 5:18 AM

Look for DBAN... by far the best nuke program I've ever seen. I don't know anyone that's been able to recover data off a DBAN'd drive. And trust me, I know "social engineering" people who do it all the time on weak reformats.

Posted by: Mobius at June 7, 2008 4:26 PM

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DBAN is Darik's Boot and Nuke available at
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ - and yes, it's another good
solution.

Leo

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Posted by: Leo at June 7, 2008 9:24 PM

can I ask a question. I had a new hard drive with new bios put in. If I erase the HD will the BIOS be left so I can reinstall the OS.
Thanks

Posted by: Amanda Stephen at June 8, 2008 3:19 PM

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Erasing your hard disk does NOT erase your BIOS.

Leo

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Posted by: Leo at June 8, 2008 9:28 PM

What about encrypting the data? then I would think it could (in many cases) become an impossible task to decrypt the data, from the partly recovered data you get from the drive.

As long a you've chosen a strong passphrase, and as long as you're certain that the unencrypted data was never temporarily outside of your encrypted container (like, say, the Windows swap file or a temporary file) then yes, encryption could be a viable solution.

Specifically I think if you used whole drive encryption from day one on the drive you might be ok.

But if you're suggesting to encrypt just prior to disposal, I'd just format instead. Or break out my drill press. :-)

-Leo

Posted by: Simon at July 29, 2008 4:32 AM

>Amanda Stephen:
>can I ask a question. I had a new hard drive with >new bios put in. If I erase the HD will the BIOS >be left so I can reinstall the OS.

The Bios isn't saved on the hard drive. It's normally saved on a chip on your motherboard. This chip can be overwritten or in some cases physically replaced. Without a bios a normal PC is useless, because is can't load an operating system and thereby can't be operated ;-)

Posted by: Simon at July 29, 2008 4:46 AM

Why erasing hard drive is required ?

Get your answer here...

http://www.eraseharddrivedata.com/wiping-hard-drive-process.php

Posted by: Erase hard drive data at August 1, 2008 12:00 AM

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