Selling a hard drive, how do I erase all the data that was on it?

[tracerit]

I've been using this old 60GB WD ATA hard drive as a backup drive for the last year so it has quite a bit of private data on it. I've already deleted everything (through WIndows), but I know there are ways to still recover some data. I'm planning on selling it but I'd like to do a complete wipe of the drive to make sure there are no way to recover what's gone.

 

[redbeard1]

If you run a high number of passes of the dod methods in this program, nobody is going to get anything off of it.

The beta version works better on new sata chipsets.

The more passes you run the longer it will take. On a slow system this can take over 24 hours.

DBAN

 

[vailr]

Find a bootable floppy or bootable CD program, (of which there are several) designed to do this.
WD may have one such program. Connect the hard drive and boot from the CD or floppy.
Overwrite the entire HD with zeros.

 

[Zepper]

Yup, DBAN (Darik's Boot & Nuke) linked above. Or the drive mfr's test utility disk (usually a free download) will have a "Zero Drive", Low-level format, or "Erase Drive" option on it. Darik's should be proof against just about any recovery attempt, but the mfr's disk should keep the average citizen from recovering anything.

.bh.

 

[Jhhnn]

D/L and use this utility to write zeroes to the drive-

http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=2

Nobody outside of a very specialized forensics lab (DEA, NSA, FBI, etc) will be able to get any data off it.