Free Programs to Completely Wipe a Hard Drive. Looking to sell an old computer and want to wipe the hard drive clean before you sell it? Whatever your reason may be, there are lots of programs out there that can help you to not only erase the data on a hard drive, but erase it in such a way that it can never be recovered again. If you have a lot of sensitive information, perform a secure wipe of your hard drive is highly recommended. A secure wipe basically performs a low- level format so that the entire disk is overwritten with 0’s. Other software will write junk data multiple times over the disk so that there is no trace of what was there before. Either way, no one is going to be able to get the original data off the hard drive because it’ll be completely gone. In this post, I’ll mention five fairly popular programs that you can use to really erase a hard disk properly. There are so many good free programs, that it’s really not necessary to spend any money on doing something like wiping a hard drive. You’ll pretty much get the same results using freeware. IDE, SCSI, USB or Firewire hard disk drive. HDD Wipe Tool will clear partitions, MBR, and every bit of user data. The data cannot be recovered after using this utility. The program utilizes Ultra-DMA transfers. Good program to wipe a hard drive. This needs to be written to a disk and booted to from the bios. Active@ Kill Disk is disk eraser software for. Active@ KillDisk also uses some more advanced methods to erase hard drive and other data. The program supports many. Data Sanitizer Software. Disk Doctors Data Sanitizer. Open source boot disk that automatically and completely deletes the contents of any hard disk it can detect, which makes it an utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. WipeDrive wipes hard drives securely. Files leave physical imprints or shadows on your hard disk and skilled computer hackers can access. WipeDrive will wipe hard drive data in preparation for a fresh install of your. DBan (Darik’s Boot and Nuke)http: //www. This is probably the most popular program and is basically a self- contained boot disk. Create a bootable CD using CDBurner. XP or whatever burning program you like and boot to the CD when prompted after restarting your computer. You can choose from different wipe methods including Gutmann Wipe, Department of Defense Short and Medium and others. I’ve used this program several times and have found that it does an excellent job erasing data on many different types of hard drives. If, for some reason, DBan does not work for you, you can try out the other programs mentioned below. Kill. Diskhttp: //www. Kill. Disk comes in two flavors: Free and Professional. The professional version is definitely better than DBan in terms of options, but it’s not worth shelling out $4. The free version only has one way to delete the data on a hard drive (erasing with one- pass zeroes), but it’s still good enough for a decent hard drive wipe. Requirements: Microsoft Windows 7. This software uses 9 shredding patterns to wipe the hard disk, which are described as follows. We have tested Hard Disk Wipe Tool 2.35.1178 against malware with several different programs. We certify that this program is clean of viruses, malware and trojans. If data erasure does not occur when a disk is retired or lost. By accessing the entire hard drive, data erasure eliminates the risk of data. The 1995 edition of the National Industrial Security Program Operating. Certificate can be displayed after erase/wipe completion and saved as PDF: Includes one year of FREE product updates from the Web . Active@ Hard Disk Monitor NTFS Reader for DOS Active@ KillDisk Active@ ERASER Active@ ZDelete. Definitely DBan is better since you can use the Do. D 5. 22. 0. 2. 2- M protocol. If you do purchase the program, then you have a great set of 1. You can use the program from within Windows directly, via DOS or use bootable media so you can wipe any disk whether it was running Windows, Linux, OS X, etc. If you need to erase a large number of disks, it might be worth the monetary investment, otherwise you’re good with the free version. Disk Wipehttp: //www. Another good freeware app is Disk Wipe. The only downside is that it is a Windows app, so you have to run it from within an already existing operating system, whereas the other two mentioned above can be booted to using a CD or floppy disk. And since it’s a Windows app, it can really only erase hard drives that are Windows formatted (NTFS, FAT3. FAT, etc). However, if that is not a problem for you, then the program is great! It’s portable and doesn’t require any installation, so you can carry it around on a USB stick or just email it to yourself. It can wipe hard drives, memory sticks, SD cards, etc. It also supports the advanced algorithms like Do. D 5. 22. 0- 2. 2. M, US Army, and Peter Guttman. Eraserhttp: //eraser. Another program that is similar to Disk Wipe is Eraser. The software is open- source and is routinely updated. The latest version supports Windows 7 and Windows Server 2. Again, the downside is that it only supports the Windows operating system and can only erase the data on drives that support Windows. Eraser does not support as many advanced algorithms as the other programs mentioned above and is therefore not the best option if you really need to securely erase your hard drive. It’s a free option and does the job, but there is more risk using this program. HDD Low Level Format Toolhttp: //hddguru. HDD- LLF- Low- Level- Format- Tool/This program is free, but has a speed cap on it, which is around 1. GB per hour. If you spend a whopping $3, you can get the program without any speed cap. It supports SATA, IDE, SCSI, SAS, USB and Firewire drives, which is nice. Again, like the last two mentioned, it only supports the Windows operating system, so if you have a hard drive from a different operating system, you’ll have to plug it into the Windows PC you are using. Overall, your best options are DBan and Kill. Disk for really getting just about any hard drive wiped with the highest level of security. If those don’t work for you or the cost is too much, you can try any of the other three programs mentioned. Is there a program that you use to wipe data securely? If so, post a comment here and let us know. Erase hard drive by Active@ Kill. Disk. Low Level Format. When you are planning to sell your computer or pass it onto someone else, you might not think at first just how harmful that can be. Sure, you may format the hard disk, assuming that all of the data on it is deleted and that no one will be able to retrieve your data. In reality, however, things are a little bit different. When you delete a file or format your hard disk or any other kind of media, you're not actually deleting anything at all. All formatting a disk or deleting a file does is mark the previously occupied disk space as free space. This means that other data can overwrite it in the future. Eventually, the deleted data will be overwritten so many times that it will become completely irretrievable. One format or deletion is nothing like enough, however. When you pass along your computer, hard drive included, you need to make absolutely sure that the disk is completely wiped of any sensitive information. You must wipe hard drive data. These days, we use our computers for many different purposes, including Internet banking and online purchases. This means that you will probably have your financial information stored on the computer. In addition to that, you likely have plenty of other data stored on your computer which you wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands. When someone else has access to your hard disk, formatted or not, they can, theoretically, access this data. One does not even have to be particularly computer- savvy to do so. Recovery software designed for getting back deleted data is everywhere these days, and it certainly doesn't take an expert computer user to recover deleted data. So, what should be done about this problem? Active@ Kill. Disk is the ultimate solution to properly erase hard drive data, ensuring that no one can ever retrieve your personal or financial information. If you are selling your computer, hard drive or other storage media, this is absolutely essential. Active@ Kill. Disk is designed to remove everything. It's actually pretty simple. All of the data stored on your hard drive is stored in the form of numbers; ones and zeros. Overwriting this digital data once will make it extremely difficult and, in many cases, impossible, to recover the data. Overwriting the old data multiple times makes it completely impossible to recover, even using the most advanced techniques. However, to ensure complete deletion of data, Active@ Kill. Disk also uses some more advanced methods to erase hard drive and other data. The program supports many security standards from many different countries, including the US Do. D 5. 22. 0. 2. 2- M standard. The program will display information about your hard disk and all of its partitions. It also works with other media such as floppy disks, USB drives and other flash media. It can erase all partitions, including any hidden partitions which don't show up in your operating system. Once the job is done, Active@ Kill. Disk will provide a detailed report showing you what has been accomplished. The software works with all versions of Windows and you can also create a bootable disk to use with your computer. If you want to secure your old data and get rid of it for good, Active@ Kill. Disk is here to help!
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