secure way to wipe a drive before selling pc

Hi

Can anyone tell me which drive wiping software to use in order to re-sell my Dell pc? A free one would be good!

 

Darik's Boot and Nuke
http://www.dban.org/
This software will write data to your hard drive and prevent anyone from using an undelete program to recover it. After Nuking the hard drive, you can re-install windows if you wish.

 

Darik's Boot And Nuke
you do realize you will have to reload your system.

 

Hi, yes thanks I know I will need to reinstall Windows and drivers. Can I ask why you recommend this software over others? I've seen things like Kill Disk and Wipe Drive. And will Darik's Boot and Nuke also wipe the free space?

 

DBAN is what I used when wiping hard drives for Pittsburg State University. One run of wiping with 0's and 1's is enough to beat any commercialy available software. If you need more than that, I think you have serious legal problems.

Regardless DBAN does not discriminate between allocated and unallocated HDD areas. It wipes it all.

 

Ok. I am a real novice on this subject. What do you mean by wiping with 0's and 1's? Is this software ok for someone like me or will it be too complicated?

 

I'll start from the beginning. Just formatting the HDD and installing Windows will not ensure that somebody cannot retrieve your personal information. They can use an undelete type program to recover some of the files.

The reason behind this is that when you delete/format/repartition a hard drive, it does not destroy the data, but marks it as unnallocated (unused). The data is still there and someone can use specialized programs to find those files and recover them if they want to.

The only way to be sure that no-one will recover data is to destroy it. This is done by writing 0's and/or 1's over that left-over personal data, effictively destroying it. The more times you wipe, the more difficult it is to undelete it.

DBAN is easy to use. You boot from the disk and you can type in autonuke to wipe all hard drives connected to the machine (be careful).

 

Hi

Thanks very much for your help. Why are there two files in the download? Not sure what to do to create a boot disc. Sorry:-o

 

no prob. When you go to dban.org, click on the "download" section at the top. At this point you are presented with the stable and preview versions, you want the stable. Also, since you probably do not have a floppy drive, you need to download the CD version.

When you get it downloaded, it should be in .iso form (disk image). If you don't have Nero or some other disk burning tool, you need to download one. I recommend cdburnerxp at http://cdburnerxp.se/

After installing CDburnerXP, start the program. One of the options on the first menu is "Burn disk from ISO". Do that and just open your .iso file. You will need a blank CDR disk for this.

After that, just boot from the disk.

 

When you download Darik's Boot-and-Nuke from here, it downloads a .ZIP file. When extracted, it ends up as a folder with 5 text files, 2 folders, 2 internet shortcuts, and an ISO file. The file you're concerned with is the ISO file (see the 1st screen shot below). You need to burn this ISO file to a CD as an image, and NOT as a data disc. The easiest way to burn ISO images is to use the free (and excellent) ImgBurn. Install ImgBurn, and run it. It will open and you need to browse to the ISO file in the DBAN folder; using the Browse button in the ImgBurn 'source' section ("A" in the 2nd screen shot below), find the ISO. Select it. Then make sure you have a blank disc in the CD burner that you have selected in ImgBurn ("B" in the 2nd screen shot below). Then simply click the "Burn" symbol ("C" in the 2nd screen shot; it won't be grayed out after you select your ISO file) and let it do it's thing. Then boot to the CD by restarting the PC with the newly created disc in your CD drive. Make sure the PC is set to boot to the CD drive first, and all should go smoothly. Keep in mind: performing a secure, low-level wipe can take some time depending on the size of the hard drive, so be patient.

[dlb]
:-D

 

Thanks again! fingers' crossed it will all work.

 

Hi

Thanks so much for this info. I've downloaded the zip file and had a look at the release notes. It says it's for Apple Macs only. Is this right? I've got a Windows PC with Dual Core processor. Is this the correct version to be using? I tried version 1.07 and I received an error message: DBAN finished with Non fatal Errors. ...

 

Well, it looks like you broke DBAN.org because now I get a 500 internal server error when I try to go there :-D

 

When you get to the download page, look closer.

Stable Releases

* Download Darik's Boot and Nuke 1.0.7
o for CD and DVD media. <-- This is what you want
o for floppy disks and USB flash drives.

Preview Releases

* Download Darik's Boot and Nuke 2.0.0
o for DBAN for Apple Power Mac. <-- Not this
o for DBAN for recent Intel and AMD computers. (This beta is of production quality, but it never got tagged.)