Wipe Your Hard Drive Clean

Do you ever have a need to delete all the information on your computer's hard drive? For instance, if you are about to sell or give your old computer to someone else, you might first want to remove all your personal information.

Many people are surprised to hear that Microsoft Windows doesn't delete very much when told to do so. Windows simply marks the space as "available for reuse." In other words, when you tell Windows to delete a file, your old information remains on the hard drive for an indefinite amount of time. It remains available until the operating system eventually writes new information in its place. In fact, even reformatting a disk with Microsoft's format command will leave much information behind. This is true of hard drives, floppy disks, ZIP disks, and other storage devices.

If you tell Window to delete all your personal information, then give the computer to someone else, the recipient can use any of a number of utilities that perform "unerase" commands. That person can recover much of your personal information within a few seconds. That includes your checkbook register, your credit card information, last year's tax return, or anything else you had on that computer.

Luckily, it is easy to wipe a hard drive so clean so that even the National Security Agency cannot recover one byte of your data.

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a free program that will wipe all data off a drive by rewriting new records on every sector of the disk. DBAN does not rely on Windows' anemic erase command. Instead, it writes new data all over the disk. If that is not enough protection for you, DBAN will even fill up the disk with new records multiple times, writing different information each time. The end result is worthwhile if you believe that someone else will be using the computer in the future.

When I say that DBAN "will wipe all data off a drive," I mean exactly that: ALL data. It removes your personal data as well as the Windows operating system and everything else that is on the hard drive. Once DBAN finishes, you will not be able to boot the computer. In order to use the computer again, you will need to have a CD of Windows or Linux to load onto it.

DBAN is available in two versions: (1.) a self-contained boot floppy and (2.) a self-contained boot CD-ROM disk. The program will do any or all of the following:

Quick Erase
Canadian RCMP TSSIT OPS-II Standard Wipe
American DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe
Gutmann Wipe
PRNG Stream Wipe

Those standards don't mean too much to most of us. All except "Quick Erase" define methods of removing all readable information from a hard drive. If you would like to learn more about these standards, look at http://www.mcdpri.com/mcdpri/data-destruction-standards.htm

You also can specify how many "passes" should be made on your hard drive. For most people, running each of the above routines one time will provide sufficient protection. However, if your hard drive contains the Pentagon's war plans, the combination lock settings for Fort Knox, or the documented whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, you might want to tell DBAN to run each of the above processes multiple times.

DBAN also works on all hard drives commonly found in desktop and laptop PCs, including XT, IDE, PATA, Serial ATA and SCSI disk drives. (Most PCs use IDE drives although Serial ATA drives have become popular in the past year or so.)

DBAN does not run under Windows. You boot the floppy or CD-ROM disk, and it loads its own operating system that looks similar to MS-DOS. You will also find it easy to automate DBAN's wipe process: simply insert the disk and reboot the computer. DBAN will then automatically run the processes that you specified. This is especially useful if your employer is selling or giving away a lot of used computers and you need to wipe the hard drive of each one.

The best thing about DBAN is its price: free. Darik's Boot and Nuke is open source software; you can even download the source code to verify its operation or even to improve it, should you wish to do so.

Every PC technician should have a copy of Darik's Boot and Nuke, as should anyone who plans to sell or donate a computer. Darik's Boot and Nuke is available at http://dban.sourceforge.net

Comments

[horsedragon]

Besides price what would make DBAN better than the product I use? I presently make use of StompSofts DriveWasher (http://www.stompsoft.com/drivewasher.html) to clean up PCs that I no longer have a use for. I just wonder how well a freeware application holds up against a fully developed commercial software title. Thanks in advance for your consideration and for your input.

[Dick Eastman]

I have never seen StompSofts DriveWasher so I cannot offer side-by-side comparisons. However, please note the statement in the above article of "...is easy to wipe a hard drive so clean so that even the National Security Agency cannot recover one byte of your data."

I am not sure how ANY commercial product could claim to be better than that.

- Dick Eastman

[horsedragon]

I actually decided to look into the level of "cleaning" that was provided by StompSoft's DriveWasher and from what I can tell they, at the very least equivelent. There website states the following "...Department of Defense level Sanitization Standards. Not only does DriveWasher comply with most recognized international drive sanitization standards but also complies with the U.S. Department of Defense 5220.22-M standard for disk-sanitization. Plus, advanced settings let you configure your own overwrite patterns using customizable settings..." So I would guess that you would be safe either way.