Disk eraser

[BOAC]

Quick stupid question: I wish to erase a Laptop drive before disposal. I can download any number of Windows programmes to do this. I had a thought(!) that if I wipe the whole drive under Windows, what will allow the eraser to make its subsequent passes? Should I use a DOS based eraser and will it still work after the first wipe?

[mixture]

If I were in your shoes, I would remove the hard drive and dispose of the laptop ex-hard drive.

Laptop drives are tiny 2.5" jobbies, I'm sure you can find an unobtrusive home for it at the bottom of a rarely used drawer or in your shed/garage or something.

Sure you can get secure erasing tools, but why waste more of your time on a machine you're disposing.

Hard Drives are cheap as chips, so any new owner won't be breaking the bank by having to buy a new drive.

The other thing you could/should do irrespective of whether you choose the erase or remove route is to detach the controller board from the hard drive and dispose of that separately (and remove/scratch away unique ID data and barcodes from the labels on the drive). This instantly removes any "easy" data recovery techniques (i.e. you would have to resort to forensic techniques using expensive kit) because the controller board has drive specific calibration and track information. Obtaining replacement controller boards is difficult enough for those not in the industry .... obtaining replacement boards without any ID information from the labels is neigh on impossible).

[Saab Dastard]

Use a bootable utility, such as Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing (http://www.dban.org/)

But for true erasure, you should remove and destroy the disk.

SD

[PowerDragTrim]

Keep the drive and use it as spare storage/backup.
You will need something like this:
USB 2.0 to SATA Serial ATA 15+7 22P 2.5" HDD Laptop Hard Disk SSD Cable Adapter | eBay (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-2-0-to-SATA-Serial-ATA-15-7-22P-2-5-HDD-Laptop-Hard-Disk-SSD-Cable-Adapter-/400624470047?pt=UK_Computing_Drive_Cables_Adapters&hash=item5d4714481f)
There are similar ones for IDE drives.

[dazdaz1]

Back in the old days of Dos v.1+ Some do still work on W7 and XP there was a command, no not DEL but Eraze. By entering the erase command followed by the 'wild card' *.* would wipe the disk, they were floppies in those days no HD in sight. To boot up one had to insert the boot up disc then other software discs for applications such as games and w/p software. Happy times, no internet no virus.

Oh how I miss my Olivetti Prodest PC1 Much better than the Amstrad 1512 bring back Wordstar for w/p simple with spell checker and 8pin dot matrix printers err maybe not.

[BOAC]

Thanks all: Drive was, I think, 'past' its 3 score years and ten anyway. Saab, I already have DBAN, but the question was will it run to the end without Windows on the machine? I assume it will boot from its own system - but is this independent completely of any hard drive partitions etc?

[Saab Dastard]

will it run to the end without Windows on the machine? I assume it will boot from its own system - but is this independent completely of any hard drive partitions etc?

Yes, and yes.

SD

[Mac the Knife]

More of this old canard!

After a secure erase with something like Boot and Nuke/DBAN recovery of anything other than the occasional disjointed scrap is impossible even with sophisticated, time-consuming and expensive data forensics.

This may just be enough if crims/police are targeting a company or an individual, but the idea that when Smith, Jones or Brown chucks an old hard drive that some one in the junkyard is going to spend time and money running forensics on your old HDD is just plain silly.

Yes, you should do a secure erase but more than that is just over-paranoid and silly.

Mac

[Actually, if you're sure you'll never use that old 4GB drive then it's more fun to dismantle it and play with the magnets, and a lot quicker just to run a drill through it.]

[BOAC]

play with the magnets - did that with an old IDE Seagate - kept getting strongly drawn to the fridge door. Mind you there was beer in the fridge.;)

Thanks, SD

[Biggles78]

BOAC, this is an excellent app to sterilise your HDD Hard Drive Eraser (http://www.harddriveeraser.org/) . Meet US DOD specs with one setting and the creator has his own special setting the makes the DOD setting look weak. I have used this several times and I have never been able to recover old data using some of the better commercial data recover programs. As advised above, remove HDD from computer and run from a different machine. Make sure both devices have sufficient ventilation/airflow as the erasee drive does tend to get a tad warm due to the activity involved.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Back in the old days of Dos v.1+ Some do still work on W7 and XP there was a command, no not DEL but Eraze. By entering the erase command followed by the 'wild card' *.* would wipe the disk, they were floppies in those days no HD in sight. To boot up one had to insert the boot up disc then other software discs for applications such as games and w/p software. Happy times, no internet no virus.

Oh how I miss my Olivetti Prodest PC1 Much better than the Amstrad 1512 bring back Wordstar for w/p simple with spell checker and 8pin dot matrix printers err maybe not.

The ERASE (not Eraze) command is still a part of the command prompt interpreter, and *.* (or . even simpler) still does the same task.

Obviously, with the earliest versions of DOS you couldn't even create directories so *.* or . was it for the storage.

[dazdaz1]

*.* was a wild card, incorporating every file and folder for deletion. There again the *.* could be used to bring forth all files on the floppy.