Totally obliterating info from a Hard Drive?
 

Im donating a couple PCs to charity however they have personal/financial info on them. I have heard that people buy used PCs for the sole purpose of extracting info from them, so how do i totally obliterate info from the HD.

And please no format C: responses, Im looking for something more industrial like BC wipe.

Thoughts?

You could always use a hammer on the hard drives. :Graucho

high powered magnet

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/sdelete.shtml

Try searching google for 'DoD overwrite' basically the utilities write random data 32+ times to the entire harddrive. It takes a long time, but it's the standard for decommissioned hard drives from sensitive gonvernment entities.

well i want them to be usable hence the charity part....lol but thanks for the idea... :)

Western Digital has "zero out the drive" as an option in the utility disc. Other corps probably have it to. I writes jeberish over the whole drive so the basic data recover retrieval software cant find it. Probably only the Feds could after its all been written over once and then it wouldnt be a pretty picture. Safe AFAIK.

this works, or you could just remove the harddrives and replace with a 20gb
i think they're about $25

Zeroing out the harddrive will erase the data for most people, but there are techniques that well funded agencies/people can still use to recover that data.

http://www.usenix.org/publications/l...ann/index.html

Found some good freeware on google...thanks agent cash for the tip. :thumbsup

uberformat c:

you format, then fill the drive with 0's, format again, then fill it with 0's again, and format once more.

make sure to delete the file system and all partitions each time.

the NSA/DoD do this exact same thing, except after all that, they smash the HD's, then burn them, but since you want to give em away, thatll keep you safe.


the point is to overwrite any remenants of data that are left behind on the hard drive even after delete, until something comes in and needs the space which then overwrites the left over data of whatever deleted files, so your basically deleting everything, then overwriting all remaining info with 0's, then getting rid of all that, then overwriting everything with 0's again, delete it again, and re-create the filesystem and partition.

This prog is supposed to get everything off
http://www.cyberscrub.com/cyberscrub/index.php

Back in my USMC days this is how we did it with the "disk packs" (mainframe HDD).

1) Unbind and dismount said pack.
2) Hand 3 Jr Marines sledge hammers.
3) Send troops out to the back lot with sledges and disk packs.
4) Order them to have fun beating the disk packs into unrecognizable bits of shattered metal.
5) Separate the rubble into 3 piles to be shipped off for incineration separately.

Works pretty good, but as said above it's not very practical if you're donating the PC to a charity. :)

sledgehammer works the best, make sure each disc is seperated from the drive box

Do what is called a low level format. It writes over every bit.
Takes forever but will do the job. Google is your friend.....

This site http://www.iolo.com has a program which will destroy data.

If you want to be really sure, install linux over the top of it then formate again.