Easy software to write hdd all 1s or 0s?

I have a few hdd I want to wipe and sell. They all work fine. Id like to use the software in windows 7 and hook them up via usb.

Can I do multiple drives at one time if I have usb adapters for them?

Free software is good if anyone knows of a good one.

 

It doesn't work under Windows 7 per se but you can give DBAN a try (Darik's Boot And Nuke). I would advise putting the hard drive you wish to erase in the primary bay then boot into DBAN CD to initialise the secure erase, that way you don't get confused and accidently erase the hard drive you wish to keep by mistake!

 

+1! That's the best one I know!

CCleaner has such a feature too (under Windows) but nothing is as secure as doing it under DOS with something like Darik's Boot and Nuke!

 

Came in to say DBAN.

 

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

 

I only have laptops to work with. I have do have the option to use a USB adapter or an esata port. I have hardware for both.

 

get yourself a usb flash drive(even the smallest one should work).

go to UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

install a copy of linux(any flavour would do, I would just pick the smallest one) then issue the command I mentioned above after boot up into the command prompt.

 

I've never used Linux before. With CCleaner can you just open that program and choose the feature and then select the drive? I downloaded the newest version of that and it appears that I can. I think this might be the easiest for me to do. There isn't credit card data or super sensitive data on it. Just word files and such from some students.

It does state that it is a secure wipe. I wasn't aware that this app even did that. Thanks very much for the heads up.

 

2.5" SATA hard drives can be connected to a desktop also if such is available.

It would be easier to use, just plug into existing cables and boot from DBAN cd. What else would a desktop be used for these days anyways?

 

Eraser. Eraser

 

I can't hook as many monitors up to my notebook as I do my desktop

Good advice.

I would highly recommend against doing any kind of "secure erase" any more. Blasting 0's or random data across the whole disk is more than enough to render data unrecoverable, and if you're going to sell the drive you don't want it to incur the massive wear (and time) penalties that those multi-pass wipes take.

 

I will have to humbly disagree. I have recovered data from single pass attempts such as the method you describe. It can be done.

 

Curious to know how that can be done. As my understanding is that if you write 0s to every sector, that space has been used and contains 0.

 

Then whoever wrote the data did it incorrectly, because it's impossible unless you have access to an electron microscope, and even then it's sketchy at best. A "quick format" will not write zeros to an entire device, and even a "full format" may leave some data hanging around.

The Great Zero Challenge

 

Killdisk is good too.

Doesn't DBAN nuke everything on your system though?

 

Partition Wizard free edition 5.2,,use as boot disk,,wipe away.

Cheers
3Fees

 

No wipe program writes over every bit on the HD. They all use algorithms to randomly write data. This is why multiple passes are better. using forensic software (access data FTK etc..) if someone wanted to take the time.... you would be surprised what data is still available, albeit in chunks and pieces. It all depends on how bad they want to put something back together to get it.

You can probably get it good and clean enough for resale but if you wanted to remove data for purposes of incrimination the ONLY way to do that is find the biggest hammer you can get your hands on.

 

You're kidding, right? dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda will write zeros to every single block of the hard drive, including the MBR and partition table.

I'll give you $10,000 if you can recover ANYTHING from a drive I do that to. Even the partition setup. And you only have to give me $100 if you can't.

There is no way without an electron microscope to recover from that. And even then it's dubious, and never been tested as far as I know. COMPUTERS ARE NOT MAGIC. They don't just "do something". They are state machines. The problem people run into is that they don't know what they're telling the machine, so you have a GIGO situation.

 

That is tempting. Does it include that I have recovered all the '0's ?

 

Recover anything from prior to the zeros One caveat: if it's an SSD, all bets are off. SSDs do different secure wipes, and there are critical flaws with many current SSDs so they don't actually wipe things, and secure erase programs just end up adding wear to the drives for no good reason.

My point is that secure erases CAN be secure, but you have to know what you're doing to do so. Just running el-random boot and nuke doesn't make you safe if you don't know what you're saying "yes" to.

 

Secure erase convinced my university that I didn't illegally download anything