For security reasons I want to blank out the HD of a computer before it is given away. I know there used to be programs that would just write a series of 1’s and 0’s over the whole thing makeing any type of data recovery almost impossible.
That’s what I want where can I get it? also will it also work for tape backups?
Thanks
I did a quick search and turned up these shareware try-before-you-buy programs:
http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/57998.html
I used to use a Norton product called Wipeout, but I don’t think it’s available for free anywhere.
Hope this helps.
Check out some comments on this subject at this Slashdot discussion of a few months ago.
In a nutshell, if you really want to wipe it you’ll have to do multiple iterations (up to about 12) to reduce the chances of it being read again.
This won’t be necessary if you’re just giving it to your Mum, but it may be if it will fall into “enemy” hands.
here are some freeware utils to do this. haven’t used any of them though…
http://www.mediahorizon.net/search/System_Utilities/File_Tools/File_Deleting_Removing/index.shtml
and here’s a long list of utils from download.com
http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=destroy+data&tg=dl-2001
The simplest and best method would be to fill the hard-drive with junk data, say a million mp3’s or such, then perform a low level format. This would fill every sector of the hard-drive and erase all the data.
Even if the person who recieves the hard-drive performs an unformat, all the data they’ll be able to recover would be the MP3’s since that was the deleted data.
If security is a concern here is a pagewith some shareware shredders and wipers, Most are $ 25.00 each
I applaud the OP’s awareness that wiping a HD is needed before getting rid of it. I buy second hand computer stuff and am amazed at what people leave on their HDs. A couple weeks ago I bought a HD that was just crammed with personal info. While MS Office had been deleted, the data files were still there. Personal and business letters, even a resume. Quicken was all there including hundreds of financial records and bank account info. A ton of saved email. All the stuff needed to do a class A identity theft. (I formatted it.)
A write once and format is good enough to protect yourself from people with standard tech. But the government can recover stuff unless you go the random write lots of times route. (But none of us need to worry about that, do we!)
There is a utility that can perform an adequate zeroing, formatting, rinse and repeat that comes free with Symantec Ghost. If you happen to have a copy, the gdisk tool included has a /dod flag that should do what you want.
PGP will also do it