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Which disk wiping software would you recommend?

Chaotic42

Chaotic42

Lifer
My cousin got some horrendous virus the other day and has decided that he wants Windows 7. Fine. I need to go install it for him tomorrow, but I'm not sure how to wipe his drive securely. Is there some reputable free ware CD ISO that I can download and burn so that I can just wipe his system?

Alternatively I was thinking about just bringing a linux install disc and just running dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda, though I don't know if I can do that from a boot disc or not.

Any thoughts? I've never actually had a virus, nor have I had to restore a virus-ridden system.

Thanks.
 
Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN):
http://www.dban.org/

It's freeware & a downloadable iso.

For just formatting your drive, it's a bit of over kill. It does secure multi-pass wipes following Department of Defense standards.
 
Secure Erase is supposed to work well too, but I haven't personally used it. DBAN has been around for awhile and works well too.

The general consensus is that one pass to zero out the hard drive is enough and everything is overkill, but it's nice to have peace of mind.
 
I'd just do a slow format of the drive. That has the added bonus of marking off bad sectors; a good idea anyway for a new install.
 
If your friend is using Win7, and during setup chooses to delete the current partition, make a new partition, and do a complete format, it will zero out the HD. No need to use a third party solution. One pass of zeros is enough.
 
Well, I tried the DBAN disk and it kept crashing every time I tried to format it, so I just did the Windows 7 erase and install. Hopefully it worked.

Thanks everyone.
 
I realize OP has already accomplished his task, but for those reading this for their own decision, wiping free space on SSD's can destroy it. I suggest read on piriforums (support forum of CCleaner): http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=28349

I have been using CCleaner for quite some time. I love the program. I however ran across something that could be detrimental to SSD users. Your option to "wipe free space" completely renders a SSD useless. Solid State Drives have reserved space on the drives for firmware and extra space. The "wipe free space" doesn't see these files as allocated by the operating system, thus removing them. Without any firmware on the drive, there is no way to flash firmware on it because both the bios and the operating system can not locate the drive. The only way for this problem to be fixed is for the drive to be sent back to the manufacturer.
Click to expand...

Is WFS really needed on SSDs ? According to this, the TRIM command already makes recovery impossible - and that's the only point of WFS.
Click to expand...

Ive read other similar stories about disk wiping software wiping out the reserved space on SSD for firmware. Just be careful.
 
blackangst1 said:
I realize OP has already accomplished his task, but for those reading this for their own decision, wiping free space on SSD's can destroy it. I suggest read on piriforums (support forum of CCleaner): http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=28349
Click to expand...
No. Any SSD's that do not use a BIOS chip (like every other device with firmware on the planet does) would use a secured write protected area on the drive that couldn't be touched via standard OS APIs.
 
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