How to completly wipe a HDD?

[marshalmelow]

i have a SATA 2 320GB (283 usable) 5400 RPM by WD (western digital) hard drive in a old laptop i have. i want to sell this HDD. i have quite a bit of stuff on here that i deffinantly do not want other people to have. is there a way to delete everything so no one can retrieve the data in it? will it decrease the amount of GB usable? thanks.

 

[corroded]

slave it to another system and do a low level format... OR LOOK UP LOW LEVEL FORMAT / WIPE DISK AND DO IT OFF A BOOTABLE CD.

 

[rolli59]

http://www.killdisk.com/killdisk-faq.htm

 

[Deleted member 217926]

CCleaner has a drive wipe utility included. It has several preset wipe levels. DOD is 3 pass while the NSA specifies 7 passes. I would go with the 3 pass option since even that will take forever. If it's good enough for the Department Of Defense it should be good enough for what you need it for.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

 

[medmn]

anort3 is right on - you're probably looking at 10 to 12 hours maybe longer. A full wipe writes all zeroes to the drive - takes forever.

 

[marshalmelow]

thanks guys. i love this website. ask a question and get atleast one great answer within 10 minutes.

 

[marshalmelow]

its okay to do this on this computer im wiping right? or should i pop it in my desk top and wipe it from there

 

[GreyMachine]

Darik's boot and nuke is what i use when wiping HDDs

http://www.dban.org/

 

[marshalmelow]

CCleaner has a drive wipe utility included. It has several preset wipe levels. DOD is 3 pass while the NSA specifies 7 passes. I would go with the 3 pass option since even that will take forever. If it's good enough for the Department Of Defense it should be good enough for what you need it for.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

i did a 7 pass wipe on the computer the hard drive was in, and im on it right now. in other words everything is working fine and everything is still on my drvie. do i have to wipe my drive on a my desktop to delete everything including windows 7?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

i did a 7 pass wipe on the computer the hard drive was in, and im on it right now. in other words everything is working fine and everything is still on my drvie. do i have to wipe my drive on a my desktop to delete everything including windows 7?

Did you select the whole drive or did you leave it at the default? I think by default it only does free space. You have to select entire drive.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

DBAN!

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey

 

[Mousemonkey]

Best answer selected by mousemonkey.