Best For Removing Everything On THe Hard Drive

[AMDawG1800]

What is the BEST software for removing EVERYTHING from the hard drive...so that the hard drive is "like brand new" just as it came when you got it?

 

[geoff2k]

I would load a *nix bootdisk and do a dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rwd0c or whatever is appropriate for your version of *nix -- I'm an OpenBSD user. That would write a 0x00 to every byte on the drive.

 

[bignick]

actually you would want to do "if=/dev/random" - so to write 'random' information to the drive. you should repeat this several times (dod specs require 7 wipes, IRC).

you can get a linux bootdisk here

 

[SoulAssassin]

gdisk

 

[foofoo]

most disk manufacturers have a low level wiping utility that you can ownload from their website. ibm has their drive fitness test, etc. any of these will let you do a complete wipe of the hd. if you are paranoid, do it 10 times.