Erasing data from hard disk

[Darkelve]

We've got a couple of old computers lying around, my dad wants to get rid of them, bring them to the junk yard. However, he's afraid someone might get them and wants me to erase all data from it.

 

I read somewhere about how formatting doesn't really clean up everything, but that there is a method where you fill up your entire hard drive with zero's, or something like that.

 

Anyone know of a program that does this and that fits on a single floppy disk (CD drives are broken for a few PC's)?

[ianw1974]

This is a program I've used:

 

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

 

it installs under Windows, but you can make a nuke disk to boot from floppy and do all that you require.

[Darkelve]

If I have a dual-boot with windows (NTFS & FAT32) and Linux (ReiserFS), can it also 'take care' of the Linux partition (? I don't actually need to do this, but it's nice to know for later reference.

[ianw1974]

You would be writing at sector level on the disk rather than into the partition itself.

 

The way it works is by writing data into the sectors and thus making them unrecoverable regardless of partition format. A 7 stage write, also known as a DOD wipe should be secure enough, since it would cost loads to attempt to recover the data. For peace of mine provided you have the time - purely because it'll take ages to run, do the 36 stage Guttmann wipe, and you can practically guarantee it'll never be recovered.

 

And once done, if you like, take the disks apart and you'll not have a worry for sure after that.

[tyme]

i would go to the website of the drive manufacturer and get their utilities for doing a low-level format/zero fill.

[scarecrow]

I second tyme's suggestion. For modern harddisks low level formatting isn't really possible (this is something which can be done only in the lab), but zerofilling is just as good, practically.

For secure ( forensic-wise) data wipe, you will need a shredder using Gutmann algorithms, but (IMHO) this is a bit on the paranoid side of things.