Technology Software to Wipe Hard Drive?

[Thrombomodulin]

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[Isoprop]

http://www.dban.org/

 

[187502]

Take the hard drive out and give them the rest of the system. No consumer method of wiping a HD is 100%.

 

[southerndoc]

Take the hard drive out and give them the rest of the system. No consumer method of wiping a HD is 100%.

Wiping existing data with null data ("zeroing out," or sanitization) is sufficient for nearly all businesses and people. A 3-pass erase meets DOD/NISP 5220.22M specifications for low level classified material (i.e., not classified secret or top secret).

It takes a lot of time and money to extract data after a 3-pass erase, and I doubt you have data that is that sensitive. If it's that sensitive, then you're best to 35-pass erase and destroy the hard drive. S and TS material requires not only a 35-pass zero erase, but also physical destruction of the hard by shredding and then melting the drive platters. People can still read some intertrack data from a sanitized disk, and sanitization doesn't erase residual data that resides in bad tracks/segments.

Keep in mind that a 7-pass erase will take about 12 hours on a 250 GB hard drive. A 35-pass erase takes days.

 

[187502]

...Keep in mind that a 7-pass erase will take about 12 hours on a 250 GB hard drive. A 35-pass erase takes days.

Hence the suggestion to just remove the drive and donate the rest. Easy and efficient.

 

[Slevin]

Not that big of a deal to do a 35 pass if you aren't using the computer. Just set it up to run and forget about it.

 

[Thrombomodulin]

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[Isoprop]

wow talk about paranoid. for protection of non-laboratory attacks, the NIST states that ONE overwrite is sufficient for today's media.

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf

 

[crazy_cavalier]

S and TS material requires not only a 35-pass zero erase, but also physical destruction of the hard by shredding and then melting the drive platters.

Whoa... kinda reminds me of the ending of Terminator 2