Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
When you are about to dispose of a computer or hard disk it's critical that you erase your data. DBAN does it, simply and securely.
I get questions surrounding data recovery fairly often. People are often concerned that files they've deleted might be recoverable after the fact, and it's good and security conscious of them to be concerned.
At the other end of the spectrum are people who give no thought at all to the potential recoverability of their data, and discard old computers and hard drives without giving it a second thought. We often hear about people who've picked up an old computer at a recycler or yard sale, only to find that the hard disk is full of the previous owner's sensitive data.
Identity theft often follows.
DBAN, short for Darik's Boot And Nuke, is a free utility dedicated to doing one thing, and one thing well...
Erasing hard drives.
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You boot from it, and you nuke the hard drive. It's that simple, and it's very, very effective.
DBAN is available as either an ISO file you can burn to create a bootable CD, or as an installer that will allow you to create a bootable floppy or USB stick.
Once you boot DBAN, there are several options which, for most practical purposes you can safely ignore. Press F10 and it will detect and erase everything on every hard disk on the machine.
Let me say that again, this time quoting the site:
| DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. |
Once you run DBAN on a machine, whatever was on the hard disk is gone. Forever.
Which is exactly what you want when you're about to dispose of a machine or hard disk.
DBAN does have advanced options for overwriting data multiple times, using different algorithms to even more securely erase your data, but for common usage the defaults are plenty.
DBAN: Boot and Nuke your data.
I recommend it.
Article C3585 - December 6, 2008 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
October 19, 2010 2:29 PM
@ninja You will probably have to get into your BIOS and disable any card reader port to an external drive that is enabled by default, it usually hangs on something like that.
January 29, 2012 6:40 PM
Just wanted to thank you for your very informative and useful website and newsletter
May 8, 2012 4:13 PM
DBAN is FREE and it does one thing only. It wipes the HD completely and forever.
May 24, 2012 12:06 AM
This article talks about running DBAN from bootup and wiping ALL detected hard drives - is there an option to run it manually such that you can specify a specific drive? Often, people/friends give me drives that I take to work to run through the degausser to wipe them, but it would be easier if I could connect the drive to my PC and properly wipe it from there instead, without killing my entire PC.
24-May-2012
May 24, 2012 12:34 AM
@Kevin
If you just want to wipe one drive, you can use CCleaner. Under Tools there is a Drive Wiper option. It can be set to to wipe the contents of any specified drive. CCleaner windows cleaning tool.