Opinions Wanted: Best tool for scrubbing HDD

I've had to scrub my Inspirion XPS's hdd a few times over the years and I've been using a CD my friend gave me at a LAN party a while ago. It's DBAN's boot and nuke and it seems to do the job pretty well.

What programs or methods do you guys use when your hard drive needs a good scrubbing? I'm not really concerned about the magic number of times it needs to be wiped to be unrecoverable so much as a different quick and reliable way that might be out there.

Feel free to share any awkward moments involving hdd wipes too. (I remember when I first wiped my hdd and realized I only had the upgrade version of XP and I had to hunt down someone with 98 or ME to boot from lol)

 

DBAN would be the solution if you want to completely wipe the drive. If you are just looking to clean things up and not erase your OS install, I'd look at CCleaner.

 

Checking out their site now thanks! It doesn't remove spyware or anything right? Looks like a good optimization tool though. Sure beats re-installing windows.

 

No, it doesn't do spyware, it is mostly to clean up temp files and other junk and remove unused registry keys. For uninstalling programs completely, I'd recommend Revo Uninstaller.

 

Thanks for the help atbnet, dl'ing CCleaner as we speak.

also, I'm using PCtools anti-spyware from the Google Pack. Is this a reputable antispy program or waste? It found some nasty trojans on my colleague's computer and cleaned them even when his Norton didn't catch it. (I keep waiting for it to prompt me that my free trial is over lol)

Thanks for the suggestions

 

I haven't used it personally, so I can't really comment. Norton isn't a very good security application anymore, it is more of a waste of system resources.

 

Another program like DBAN is Active@KillDisk, it can be burned to a bootable CD so you can easily wipe your HD.
Instead of PCTools Antispyware, I'd use both SUPERAntispyware and Malwarebytes'Antimalware.
They're not household names yet but these are the best programs available for doing on-demand scans. And there are free versions of those 2.
Check my sig for links.
Cheers.

 

Baserk, thanks for the links. Happy with both of them so far~

 

I just boot from a Linux LiveCD and run:

Code:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M

And that blasts random data across the whole disk. Do it twice or three times if you're feeling paranoid It's free, easy, and you can use the LiveCD for other things, too. I never leave home without one.

And for your XP install new_found_glory... you only needed to supply the WinME/98 install disc... you didn't actually need to install it

My stories? The worst feeling in the world is when you copy one drive to another, and realize you accidentally switched the source and destination drives. I triple-check things now every time I do any kind of low-level twiddling.

 

CCleaner and Eraser are 2 I've had good luck with

 

in CC leaner there is an option that allows it to delete X many times. And if your still crazy about it, just download recuva *from the maker of CCleaner* to see what stuff is left ;p

but if you want to make your drive dead.. all you gotta do is take the two ends of a 12 V battery ...

 

Or You could use Tools like BartPE or Hiren BootCD

 

I cannot imagine what I would do if I did that accidentally (especially if I did it to a friend or co-workers computer!) I'd be like: looks like that virus got your computer bad man...(kidding of course)