How to securely sell hard drives

[Dapman02]

I recently sold my seagates and want to make sure that I completely wipe them off.
WHat's the best way to do this.

[madhatter256]

killdisk. Google it. Unable to get hardly anything after one swipe of killdisk with my $90 recovery software...

[CreePinG_DeatH]

I've always used DBAN. You can DL it from http://www.dban.org/ Just burn a CD and boot from it.

[jonniefive79]

+1 for DBAN.

It takes some time but it absolutly erases everything.

[Dapman02]

alright, I'm using killdisk becuase dban keeps saying that I have bad sectors. even though many scans say I don't:shrug:. How long should this take. I've been sitting here for 15 minutes and I don't even hear my hard drive seeking, and my progress bar hasn't moved from 0 percent. My HDD indicator is glowing red so it has to be doing something, but how can I be sure.

[Dapman02]

alright, nevermind, I got dban working with the latest beta 2.0.
thanks everyone for your help.

[ihrsetrdr]

+2(or +3) for dban.

[jonniefive79]

The time DBAN takes to finish depends on which method you use. I think it was about 16hrs with a 250 GB Seagate 7200.10 and an AMD 4200+ using the 3 pass method, same as D.O.D. uses.... IF that helps

[hitokiri_808]

I use acronis and do a 4 pass wipe. Takes about 8+ hours depending on the HD.

[Grayfox]

i used ioio disk scrubber

you can make boot CD's mine was free(legal)

got it free from a PC mag

[madhatter256]

So, as you can see. Wiping the drive clean will take a while. You might wanna do this overnight.

[Grayfox]

use a DOD 3 pass method

using a DOD 11 pass or a gutman (37pass) is overboard

[Methal]

would writing 0's to the drive completely remove everything off of it? or even a long format?

I've been using recuva to find deleted files. When I format a drive using the long method it can't find anything on it.

[Randyman...]

From what I gather, anything beyond a "full format" is complete overkill. The only way I know of to recover data from a full-format is to anylize the magnetic memory of the bits on the platter (as in a clean room with some SERIOUS technology and lots of cash involved). Is your data that valuable that someone is going to go through all that trouble "on a whim"? I seriously doubt it...

However, running dban isn't going to hurt unless the drive happens to fail during the stress of constant activity (in which case it is probably good that it fails BEFORE you sell it to someone ;) )...

I think it is the E.U. that has insane requirements on discarding "Government use" hard drives. They first run like a dozen passes of zeros, then they physically grind the drive to bits (literally), and THEN they store the ground-up drive in a maximum security underground facility for like 100 years! Talk about paranoid :eek: :p

[madhatter256]

Another way is to fill up the drive with junk data, such as DVD rips, etc. that can take up the HDD space. Then simply do a simple format to empty it.

It basically overwrites most of the drive, where crucial data was once stored.

[doublejack]

I agree with Randyman. Anything beyond writing all 0's to the drive (aka a "full format") is overkill. Could someone recover data from a drive after it has been wiped like that? Sure. But will they do it? Unless they think there's something extremely valuable on it, the answer is they almost certainly won't.

The FBI can recover old data from two or three or four, etc. writes prior to what is currently stored on a drive. But this is not a trivial process by any stretch of the imagination, and as such it is not something that a typical buyer can pull off. Not even if they wanted to. And this holds true even if they have some expensive "recovery" program.

I've sold several of my old used drives, and I've never gone beyond formatting the disc and writing 0's. That can take from 15 or 20 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the size of the drive.

[Grayfox]

i done it for fun, found data but no MFT so i could not get it off