Wipe Hard Drive Program

[JodyWood]

I have some computers that I am preparing for donation, but want to start fresh with the hard drive in the computer. What recommendations can be made for preparing the computers for donation? I assume I first want a program to wipe the hard drive clean. Any recommendations to handle this? Any other suggestions for the preparation?

Thanks,
Jody Wood

[liam858]

I'd recommend killdisk: http://www.killdisk.com/ to quickly wipe the drive, it can be placed on a floppy, and then boot from the floppy, so you could just use the 1 floppy disk and work your way through the systems.


Liam

[JodyWood]

How would you handle hard drives that have had problems or seem to no longer work (i.e. clicks, doesn't spin up properly, etc)?
Thanks,
Jody

[Steve R Jones]

How would you handle hard drives that have had problems or seem to no longer work (i.e. clicks, doesn't spin up properly, etc)?
Thanks,
Jody

Sounds like these need to be replaced.

[JodyWood]

Right, but data could still be recovered from these drives right? If so, how? Also, after recovery, what should be done with the drives? Sledgehammer? :-)
Thanks,
Jody

[SpywareDr]

Don't laugh, I literally physically destroy all hard drives ... and I'm not the only one:

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...01&postcount=6

[Steve R Jones]

If you can hook the drives up as slaves and access the data, you're good to go.

If you can't access the data, you'd have to take them to a pro. $500 to $2000 per drive unless you can get a volume discount...

[SpywareDr]

And one of those well-known Pro's is Ontrack: http://ontrack.com/

[JodyWood]

Thanks for the great information!

SpywareDr - Liked the picture of the smashed up drive!

Any thoughts on this program: Eraser - http://heidi.ie/eraser/?

[Welshjim]

liam858--Any particular reason for chosing KillDisk instead of Heidi's Eraser?

[liam858]

It's just personal preference Jim, i've always used Killdisk, and never actually tried Eraser, so i recommended it out of personal preference for ease of use, i'm guessing Eraser is pretty much the same?


Liam

[SpywareDr]

Like all the "m"'s in Active@Killdisk's "US Department of Defense 5220.22-M Clearing and Sanitization Matrix" Sanitize column:

m = Destroy - Disintegrate, incinerate, pulverize, shred, or melt

[M. David Petrella]

Look for UltraWinCleaner Plus Destroy-It on either Software Blowouts or Nothing But Software ...

Destroy-It comes with a Drive Zapper option which utilizes the DOD standard for 'sanitizing' magenetic media.