Need a hard drive wiped securely?

I recently gave away one of my old computers and decided that I’d make sure that all of my information was really removed from the disk above and beyond a disk format. A quick Google search, plus a few recommendations (quite a while ago) from friends, and I found DBAN or Darik’s Boot and Nuke.

The DBAN software download is a disk image that can be used to create a bootable CD or USB disk (based on a minimal build of LINUX for intel or ppc processors) that will securely shred the contents of a hard disk. DBAN uses a pseudo-random number generator to write over every location on a disk with multiple passes to statistically guarantee that no data on the drive can be recovered without quite a bit of time, effort, and expense if it’s even possible.

A few hours running 5 sets (quite excessive) of 7-passes or writing various patterns to the drive, and I had a “totally” clean disk.


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