Complete HDD wipe utility

When my new Envy 14 comes in, I'm going to be selling my current Inspiron 1420. However, I'd like to completely wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows before selling it. Does anybody know of a good (preferably free) hard drive scrubber? Bonus points if it can run from a bootable USB drive or do its dirty work from within Windows, since I'd save a bit of time and trouble as compared to buying a blank CD and then burning a boot disc for the application. I suppose a Linux-based scrubber would be acceptable as well, since I've already got a boot disc for Ubuntu 9.04 lying around.

So, anybody know of any good ones?

 

Darik's Boot and Nuke aka DBAN.

Normally a boot disc (CD or DVD) is used. Below is a guide to installing and booting DBAN from a USB flash drive.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install-dban-to-a-usb-flash-drive-using-windows/

Backup whatever important infomation you have on the target drive. Be sure you don't have any other drives attached to your system otherwise DBAN will wipe those as well.

--L.

 

+1 for DBAN, and set aside a good chunk of time to let it work. Don't be impatient. The more passes the better.

 

DBAN or KillDisk will do the job just fine.

KillDisk can also be run from an USB stick; see instructions on this page.

And 'one pass zero's' is sufficient to wipe your HDD (unless you are a top NASA engineer, CFO/CEO or government spook).

 

The more passes the more wear on the hard drive. With just zeroing out the drive you're not likely to be able to recover data even with an electron microscope.

QFT.

 

DBAN +1 - it's what we use at work

 

Excellent, Rep all around!

Now I just need my Envy 14 to get here so I can wipe, reinstall, and sell my Inspiron 1420 before I leave for China...

 

Since you already have Ubuntu 9.04 lying around, it's not even necessary to download and burn DBAN.

Just boot into Ubuntu from the CD without installing it to the hard drive (that is, click the "Try Ubuntu 9.04" button iirc). Fire up a terminal (Accessories --> Terminal) then run "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda"

If it asks for a password, just hit Enter. This will overwrite the entire drive with zeros. If you feel like overwriting with random numbers instead, replace /dev/zero by /dev/urandom.

 

Another paranoid goofball (heh ).

Lets be honest, no one cares enough to use an electron microscope to read your discarded info. One pass is more than enough.

 

First of all, at least quote my post properly. Don't butcher it and make it seem like somehow my post is part of yours--it's not. Second, you have a misunderstanding of what "wiping a disc" really means. The fact that you brought up "formatting" is indicative. Formatting *does not* overwrite anything. Repeat after me. "Formatting does not overwrite anything."

Formatting simple tells the hardware controller that the drive from Sector X to Sector Y is now "empty" and can be "filled up". There is no actual re-writing of the same sectors during a file-delete or OS formatting. That's why you can easily recover files that you "deleted" or were simply "formatted" away.

One the other hand, with DBAN, once all the bits are rewritten at least once, recovery will literally require electron microscopes and the recovery price are in the thousands of dollars per kilobyte.

So, again, unless you're part of a terrorist cell plotting to overthrow the government, no one really need more than a single-pass data overwrite. Not to mention the extra wear & tear on a conventional HDD is not good for it if you do extra passes.

But hey, why should I care, right? It's your hardware and your hard drive. If it breaks down on you prematurely, it doesn't concern me.

 

whoa, calm down. "Another paranoid goofball (heh )" is not a constructive comment and derogatory to the op. my quoted phrase "better safe than sorry" applies.
i am not part of a terrorist group but i, like many others, have saved searches, maybe some browsing history, and password managers that i would really not want anyone to get hold of.

 

sheesh guys. There are any number of 'dod compliant' disk wipers.

Some of them are programs that run under windows and clean out free space.

Some of them are utilities that boot from cd, dvd, or usb.

Some of them are part of various linux distros including things like clonezilla and gpartd.

 

Another hint: When using dd, make sure you add in bs=1M or so. It will take for freaking EVER otherwise. It should finish within an hour on a 500GB drive if you increase the block size.