Need help Wiping Hard Drive with DBAN or Kill Disk

[zyzz]

I am selling 2 of my computers as soon as I get an offer. I already got one yesterday.

I want to make sure the Hard Drives are 110% wiped clean. Since I have learned from this forum, reformatting is not enough.

It's not like I am selling to the FBI and I have nothing illegal to hide, then again I like to be safe. I have work stuff, private emails, etc on here and I don't take chances.

I have never used DBAN or Kill Disk. I only know them by name.

Do I run these programs and THEN reformat the computer? Or do I format first?

One computer is Windows XP, the other is Windows 7 if it makes a difference.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I'm familiar with dban and secure erase, not HDDerase, so can't offer up any new info. If HDDearse writes zeroes to all sectors of the drive, then it's most likely fine.

 

[psaus]

I'm familiar with dban and secure erase, not HDDerase, so can't offer up any new info. If HDDearse writes zeroes to all sectors of the drive, then it's most likely fine.

HDDErase is written by someone (people?) in the Computer Science department of UCSD. It's sole purpose is to invoke a Secure Erase on drives that support it.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

 

[Hawkeye22]

HDDErase is written by someone (people?) in the Computer Science department of UCSD. It's sole purpose is to invoke a Secure Erase on drives that support it.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

Ah, so it's a secure erase client. I don't see why drive manufactures don't use/make their own clients. After all they build the secure erase function into the drive, but give you no way to access it.

 

[zyzz]

secure erase is HDDerase.

what other tests can I run?

I probably should have ran recuva before updating.

I don't recognize anything, but still, if there is anything else I can do.

 

[psaus]

Fill the empty space with a TrueCrypt volume. In the wizard select:
1. Encrypted File Container
2. Standard TrueCrypt volume
3a. Serpent-Twofish-AES
3b. Whirlpool
4. Select the size (probably best to go just a few MB short of the available capacity)
5. chose a password over 20 characters.
6. shake your mouse
Wizard finished
Mount and Copy data into the new container.

This is putting scrambled data on your disk. Not the ideal solution, but the best wiping method if you've got other data on the volume.

You can rinse and repeat the above a few times if you're worried.

 

[zyzz]

thank for suggestion psaus. I have already reformatted and ran HDDerase though.

Now I need some programs other than recuva to see if nothing was left over.

any suggestions?

 

[psaus]

OnTrack is a really good recovery software, but I'm not sure you'll be able to obtain it for free...