Best disk wiping freeware...
 

Need to return a crap drive to the store. Your opinions on the best program to wipe the drive with,,, kill disk, dban, eraser...?

Thanks.:thumbsup

I like eraser. You just need to make sure you use the right settings. DBAN is good too, if you just want to erase everything

Thanks Libertine.

Using a system format command won't work?

Just formatting is not secure. You need to overwrite a number of times before the original data becomes irretrievable. (never just sell or give away an old hd after a quick format - anyone with the right tools will be able to restore pretty much all your data)

Libertine is on

good info

If its a maxtor or seagate, you can download a tool from their sites to perform a low level format. A 40GB drive normally takes an hour.

There are people on eBay buying cheap hard drives just for data retrieval. :helpme

eraser is the best, this weekend I met my sisters boyfriend he is does hard drive forensics. He told me he used eraser on a drive and couldn't bring anything back up on it.

Even after a low level format, it is possible to (physically) retrieve (some) data, because files, unless actually overwritten (preferably several times), leave magnetic traces.

New url: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Related threads maybe?

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=652639

Even using tools like eraser, the data is probably still recoverable, but not by ‘normal’ means. It’s going to require a clean room at a minimum and magnetic resonance scanning. But as long as 99% of the Joe Blows out there can’t get your data, I guess its good enough. On any critical data I remove the platter and destroy it thoroughly, though I’ve only had to do that once :P

Overwriting 30 times using Eraser will make the data virtually unrecoverable :2 cents:

You just have to do a full overwrite... modern file systems log everything :Oh crap