Best hard drive erasure software?

[Robert Morgan]

Hi all,

 

I'm moving all of my old data off of two HP laptops. As nice as they are, Envys from 2010 and 2014, its time. The plan is to also blank the hard drives before taking them to an E Waste center. What's the best software to totally blank the drives and make sure that there isn't any old data left? I'm especially worried about financial data being there as I'm an avid player of the stock market and I have a lot of account information on them. Both laptops have DVD/CD drives if that matters, so the software could be on disk. Free is fine, but I absolutely don't mind paying for high quality software if it will get the job done.

 

Many thanks!

 

Bob

 

[SupaKomputa]

Check the drive manufacturer and just download the manager utility.

Most drive have an eraser function (some call it sanitize), do it 2 or 3 times it should be ok.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Since your hauling it off to ewaste anyways, just smash it. Fast, secure, easy.

[mariushm]

WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows  : https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

 

Just run the full erase once ... it writes 0s over the whole surface of the drive once and all data is lost.

 

But yeah... just drill a couple of holes through the platters if you want to be sure.

[Guiltyxz]

Personally would just keep the drives and destroy them, if you are worried

[cazzie f]

guttman drive wipe slow YES effective YES

can be found on any search engine 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I've used the DBAN utility (Darik's Boot and Nuke) to totally wipe hard drives.

 

To be safe, I make sure that ONLY the drive(s) I want to wipe are physically connected to the PC, I unplug everything else. (I'll usually boot DBAN off a USB/DVD/CD, and that shouldn't show up as an option for a device to wipe; also I think DBAN is not recommended for wiping SSDs.)

[Gork]

Before you do a fancy wipe: shoudn't formating be suffecient? or do have stuff on them that's a NDA (nondisclosure)? because if your taking them to get recycled anyway, why not save yourself a headache, and if their' getting taken appart? probably don't need to bother.