Wipe a HDD clean?

[bbs lm-r]

Simply, what can use that's relatively quick and simple to use to wipe a HDD clean.

I use to just boot with a Windows disk and use its format, but i've heard that's not the greatest way so...

 

[darkware]

What are you trying to accomplish?

Are you just trying to get a pristine format without corruption? Then a normal (non-quick) format from any DOS utility or Windows tool should be fine.

Are you trying to securely erase a disk so its contents cannot be recovered? Then your fastest bet is probably going to be one of the drive utilities disks which can do low-level formats with zero-fills.

Some people advocate writing multiple layers of random data to a disk for added security, but as yet, I haven't heard of any organization short of national intelligence agencies which will recover background data from a zeroed disk. If you're trying to protect the data from one of those agencies, then you should be mechanically destroying the disk (shredder, acid bath).

 

[Evadman]

I use dban to write zeros to the drive before I (re)install an OS. If you want to secure erase it (if you don't think filling it with zeros is enough) then dban has lots of options to do that. (random number stream, DoD options, etc). If you work for the DoD, then you should probably be shredding the drive anyway as darkware stated.

 

[Gillbot]

dban

 

[Texashiker]

Zero fill - writes a 0 to every sector of the drive.

Or, if the drive is not going to be used again, sit a big magnet on top of the drive for a few hours. Speaker magnet 3 or 4 inches across works well.

 

[bbs lm-r]

I just want to erase its contents because I might sell it, I don't think it had anything important.

Yea i know if I wanted the data to really be non retrievable I would hand it over to my friend Mr. gravity or Mr. hammer, or Mr. plasma cutter...

Ok, think i found what I was looking for. Thx for the responses.