Reccomended Hard Drive erasing tools

[cyberspace]

One of the office laptops is being taken out of service as a new one has been purchased.

There is/has been sensitive company data on this drive in the past and so I am taking the necessary steps to make sure that the disk is wiped and not recoverable easily

So far I have used Webroots Win Washer and ran NSA level passes on all options such as IE cache, document history etc. I am currently running an NSA level clean up of free space on the hard drive where previously deleted documents may still reside.

After this has been done I was planning to use the tool supplied with Win Washer to wipe the disk.

Another tool I have downloaded is called Killdisk from LSoft Technologies

I am wanting to stick with freeware tools as there seem to be many that do the job.

Just wondering if I am going about this in a good way and if anybody has any further suggestions!

TIA.

'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[eyec]

if you figure the cost associated with your efforts and the risk of disclosure of sensitive company information sometimes it is just cheaper to physically destroy the HD and buy a new one.

barring that most 3 level government style wipe disk programs should give you a fairly good protection of wiping the info.

as a final practice reformat the HD with entires of all of one character such as the letter Z.

 

[teckystuff]

Yup you are doing well but like eyec says - the only truly safe way to protect your data would be to physically destroy the disk - really destroy it!!! There will always be someone somewhere with enough cash and resources to recover any data from any media no matter how much you have wiped it.

 

[cyberspace]

Thats a fair point, but the information isnt *that* senstitive, not government style or anything just some client information and some other detailed financial stuff etc.

I think the laptop will be given to one of the bosses sons or something like that so it would be taking it a bit far taking a hammer to it....although that would be a good way to relieve the stresses of the day hehe

I like the idea of formatting with all one charatcer, i've heard of this before.

How do I go about doing that?

Thanks for the tips so far, at least I know I am on the right track.

'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[melmitts]

A free one...

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/features.php

Mel

 

[gargoyle47]

If you want to go the software route here is one I found with Google.
Erasing a hard drive

Do a google and you will find a lot of others.

Never Say Never (Romeio Void)

Homebuilt MSI MD5000MD-5000 M-ATX, 2.4Gig, 393mb, WinXp Pro
Homebuilt Iwill KK266R-Plus, 768mb, WinXp Pro

 

[cyberspace]

Thanks, I have already downloaded killdisk - my question was wether what I was doing was a reasonable method.

'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[jessicatechy]

basically, all disk erasers (the ones that really erase) write binary zeros to the hard disk. you can do this using a vb script. but your easiest bet is get something that does this already out there as described above.

 

[sagobogger]

Darik's Boot and Nuke

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

makes a bootable CD diskwiper, good for no floppy laptops

 

[s0121]

I use a much simpler method...as you know you need to do this a least 7 times to be fairly sure the info is overwritten..
1. FDISK the drive to 1 complete paratation
2. Format the drive completely.
3. write the complete drive full I took a 1 GB file and copied over and over
4. repeat step 2 different 1 gb file
5. repeat step 3
do that until you have at least 7 times or buy you a program that will do the same thing it takes ages to do on very large HD's

Frank Smith irc.dhcnetwork.com

SomeWhere in Kansas Near Dodge City

 

[ifix1]

My 2 cent!
when ever i want to really clean a harddrive i use killdisk, it's free and 3 passes with killdisk passes DOD specs for being clean..

hopes this helps.