PC hardware forum: Erase Hard Drive Permanently on Windows XP OS

There are commercial programs that do this such as 'Wipe Drive", free programs like 'Eraser' and 'Dban', that do this and several drive mfgs Seagate, Western Digital, etc., include overwrite/wipe utilities with their diagnostic software. These may be downloaded from the mfgs websites. I have not read all the details about the latter products so do a little reading before use.

Here are some links you might find useful.

http://cc.uoregon.edu/cnews/summer2005/purge.htm

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

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

VAPCMD

PS...Programs which specify data destruction to the DoD Standard 5220.7-M for data destruction should also suffice.

by using the already mentioned method of writing zeros to all disk locations. Deleting partitions and files does not remove all the ones and zeros created by magnetizing areas of the media. This just tosses out the catalog and roadmap needed to find where the data is stored. That's why you need to visit each location on the disk with a magnetic device to alter the molecular lineup of the magnetic particles. Most drive manufacturers create testing utilities that can do a destructive read/write test. These, essentially, will adequately wipe the drive for you making data locations unreadable by regular PCs. Now, because the magnetic change is not 100% made with one pass of the heads, a very sensitive instrument might be able to pick up the ones and zeros anyway. A work around is just to make several wipes of the drive. Each pass further neutralizes the magnetism. Such prudence might be needed in critical military applications. It's very unlikely your PC will end up in the hands of someone who's paid huge amounts of money for the very specialized equipment needed to extract data from drives that have been erased in this manner. So, my recommendation for simple purposes would be to look at the drive for the manufacturer's name and visit their web site for such a utility. It should be perfectly adequate. Sorry for the long explanation but sometimes it helps to know more about a process to gain confidence in it. Don't want you losing any sleep over this.

I'd say that's a bit of overkill. The blast furnace alone would have done the full job without the wasted effort of the interim steps. But there's a balance between reasonable security and bullet proof security where the cost and energy rise by logarithmic proportions. The person asking advice will need to weigh the value danger of having the data resurface against the odds someone out there is aggressive enough to want it and decide the best path to take. Now, what chance do you think there is that a band of professional para-military style jewel thieves would put together a plan to raid a Wal-Mart for its earrings and necklaces?

I mentioned the possibility of removing the drive and selling it that way. This might limit the number of potential buyers but wouldn't devalue the PC that much. As well, being an old machine, I can't think of much reason to use the old drive in a new machine. I'd guess any data that needed to be saved had already been copied so there'd not even be much reason to keep it as a secondary drive.

and don't care who might find the drive and take a peek, you can certainly do that. I help recycle computers that a school is getting rid of. The hard drives are removed and kept for a reasonable amount of time to allow teachers/students the opportunity to suddenly remember a file they wanted. When this time passes, the drives are erased or physically destroyed. I doubt there's much in the way of sensitive data on these but, as a courtesy and a lesson, they are treated as such anyway.

that could work. It's probably not on the list of approved DoD methods, however. Get video.

the fbi is now tracking your message since it looks like you have something to hide. get real. two hammer shots takes out the old hard drive and 10.00 buys you a used one.

I would suggest Darik's Boot and Nuke. http://dban.sourceforge.net/