Need to securely wipe external hard drive. Suggestions?

[TKHDebater]

My sister's laptop stopped working, some kind of internal power issue, so I pulled the HD, hooked it up via an IDE -> USB adapter, copied the files to her new laptop, and now need to securely wipe the HD so I can ebay the old malfunctioning laptop. My impression is I can't use DBAN because it's an external drive... How does one securely wipe an external HD from XP or Vista?

Thanks for the help.

TKH

 

[cparker]

Since you've already taken out the drive the simplest, most direct way would be to hook it up to a computer via an ide cable to the motherboard ide connector and disconnect all other drives other than floppy or cd boot drive. You might need an adapter to convert the laptop ide drive connector to the standard ide cable. But if you want to wipe the drive that will be in the laptop you sell why can't you just put it back in the laptop, plug in a usb floppy for dban and then just nuke the drive while in the laptop?

 

[Rabbits]

You can wipe the partition through a Windows install though it won't be permanent. I think there's a norton programl that does it.

 

[Keitero]

Western Digital Diags for Windows has the option the low lvl format the drive. A bit extreme, but it should do the trick.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: cparker
Since you've already taken out the drive the simplest, most direct way would be to hook it up to a computer via an ide cable to the motherboard ide connector and disconnect all other drives other than floppy or cd boot drive. You might need an adapter to convert the laptop ide drive connector to the standard ide cable. But if you want to wipe the drive that will be in the laptop you sell why can't you just put it back in the laptop, plug in a usb floppy for dban and then just nuke the drive while in the laptop?

this is what i would do...