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Delete Destroy and Erase Old Hard Drives By: David Rader II on July 30, 2010 @ 1:23 AM
Today my mission was to "shred" or to securely erase data from multiple hard drives. These are old hard drives that I was erasing for safe re-use by another person. Along my journey a-la-cheap (free), I found many options. Many of which were scary. My initial weapon; Windows XP. My foe; old data. (Works for Windows 2000 - Windows 7 too)
Reading my exhausting journey to secure data deletion or skip to the verdict.
The first option I found was CCleaner. Apparently it's a nice diagnostic tool that also does a very well rated job of deleting your nasty adult internet files! Rated almost 5 stars on Download.com!).
The second option I found was "DBAN" - It stands for Darik's Boot And Nuke. When you put this boot disk in your computer, it erases ALL HARDDRIVES FOUND! Since I didn't want to take out my numerous good hard drives, this was not an option for me. However, if you're a secret agent you may want to keep this on hand at all times, if not for your own computer, than just to slow your enemies down. You can get it from their website.
The third option I found was not very viable considering I wanted to "reuse" these hard drives after data destruction. Please see the following video:
The final option was to format my hard drives the old fasioned way first; through Disk Management. It took me an hour to find the last and most efficient free tool; "Hard Disk Scrubber." It will overwrite free space on a hard drive (pre-formatted space from the Disk Management format!).
If you don't know how to format a disk through XP disk management, feel free to drop a message and I'll explain it. I don't have Windows 7 yet though so I can't make any good tutorials for that at the moment (anyone have an extra copy of Win7 64 bit laying around? :)..
There you have it! After an hour of searching and a normal hard drive formatting, the free Hard Disk Scrubber won the competition! While no prize money was involved, my links to their website three times is my thanks.
*Disclaimer I am not paid nor endorsed by Summit Computer Networks in any way for this article. Any claims are based on my personal experience and are provided free so you wont have to waste as much time searching for this solution as I did. I claim no liability over the operation of the aformentioned hard drive destruction solutions. Destroy your data at your own risk!
