Help: Securely erasing data

kunz · #1 2007-07-10, 06:07

Hello Totse,

I am planning to sell a laptop that I have had for a long time. It had some sensitive data on it and don't want to sell it before making sure it is not really easy to recover it by using programs like Restoration.

Since I had formatted the laptop a little while back, there is no visible data on one of the drives. That is, the computer can not see the files as they have been removed from the file allocation table; but they are still there. I am looking for something that will overwrite all the sectors a couple of times (or something along those lines) where the computer can not see any data effectively making it difficult to recover.

Knowing Totse, I know some wise ass will suggest I sit and manually fill the drives with stuff a few times; no thank you!

All other helpful suggestions are welcome!

Molosh · #2 2007-07-10, 06:22

DBAN that shit.

Or manually fill the drives a few times?

MunkeyQ · #3 2007-07-10, 06:30

Write it with all zeros a few times, using a program whose name I have forgotten - but there are quite a few out there.

BillyJenkins · #4 2007-07-10, 09:31

Theres a HDD diagnostic utility I forget the name of... crap.

Anyway, if you run a sequential read/write it will erase the entire drive and test it in the process.

I'm sure you can find a similar program to do the same.

Bullwinkle8357 · #5 2007-07-13, 01:02

There's a free program named Eraser that will write random data to unused disk space:

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

It's nice to have installed anyway, because you can right-click on a file and the usual [delete] option is still there, but the [erase] one is too.
~

kunz · #6 2007-07-20, 20:25

Thanks for your replies guys.

Bullwinkle8357, will try that. Appreciate your help.