Best drive-erase software???

What is the best software out there to securely erase a hard drive? I am using
"Data Gone" (by the former PowerQuest Corp.), which uses any of several NSA &
DOD 3-pass sanitation methods. It appears to work very well, but then again I
dont have state-of-the-art data recovery facilities to confirm the data erasure.

Are there any well-respected reviews of disk-erasure software?

"TJM" tjm@nospam wrote in message
...
What is the best software out there to securely erase a hard drive? I am
using
"Data Gone" (by the former PowerQuest Corp.), which uses any of several
NSA &
DOD 3-pass sanitation methods. It appears to work very well, but then
again I
dont have state-of-the-art data recovery facilities to confirm the data
erasure.

Are there any well-respected reviews of disk-erasure software?


I don't know if it is "best" but Eraser http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ has a
great reputation and is free. The program is under the GNU General Public
License so that you can examine the source code to verify that nothing
sneaky is going on and then re-compile it yourself just to make sure. But,
given the number of computer wonks that use and recommend it, I doubt that
it is anything but what it represents itself to be.
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 00:48:02 -0400, "TJM" tjm@nospam wrote:

What is the best software out there to securely erase a hard drive? I am using
"Data Gone" (by the former PowerQuest Corp.), which uses any of several NSA &
DOD 3-pass sanitation methods. It appears to work very well, but then again I
dont have state-of-the-art data recovery facilities to confirm the data erasure.

Are there any well-respected reviews of disk-erasure software?


I used to work for a hospital and the IT department used killdisk pro
on all computer hard drives before disposing of the machines. That
was one of the few alternatives that complied with HIPAA's strict
requirements on ensuring patient confidentiality. FWIW they just ran
the DOD seven pass wipe before reinstalling the OS from the original
discs that came with the computer.

If you really want to kill the hard drive, get yourself a hard drive
degausser. The bad thing is that the degausser usually kills the
chips on the circuit board, hence rendering the hard drive useless.
Right before I left the hospital, they had just invested in one of
those.

Lastly, if you want to learn how to use Linux from the command line
(i.e. use http://www.toms.net/rb), you can zap your hard drive for
free.

For reference this is the command that will do it:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda ;
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda ;
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda ; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda ;
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

Sure, it is a pain to type the command that number of times, but rest
assured, that will wipe the hard drive by writing random numbers to it
seven times. BTW, it seems like this process takes forever!

As for reviews of hard drive killers, I don't know of any.

Hope that helps,
Chris

If you really want to kill the hard drive, get yourself a hard drive
degausser. The bad thing is that the degausser usually kills the
chips on the circuit board, hence rendering the hard drive useless.
Right before I left the hospital, they had just invested in one of
those.

That is harsh! I'd rather just buy a $10 sledge hammer and have at
'em......that will render most drives useless as well.