Software Choice for erasing a HD

I just want a simple wipe of my HD. The choices I got are:

- DBAN
- Terbyte Copywipe
- Western Digital Zero Utility( Data LifeGuard Diagnostics)

What are your suggestions? It,s a 250 GB WD Internal HD of my laptop.

Thanks

 

Diskpart.exe with clean all as per here?

I do it from a WinPE disk and, presumably, you can run it from a Vista / 7 Recovery disk command prompt.

philby

 

The Partition Wizard Bootable CD has several wipe options and it is Free. I have never used it to wipe a hard drive but I have booted it and saw the options to wipe a hard drive.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

 

Dban. Works works great.

 

The free version of Killdisk with its single pass is fast and effective, the paid version does multiple passes, Dban also is great.

 

Dban works extremely well, but it will remove the operating system as well. Not sure what happens if the operating system is in a separate partition, but everything on the drive may still be removed.

 

I have been using DBAN for quite some time. No complaints.

 

Thanks for replies but I am inclining towards commercial products like terabyte or western digital utility. Am i wrong?

 

DBAN is fine but if you want class then buy Bcwipe Total WipeOut. It deletes everything!

 

+1 for DBAN!

 

Don't forget you can use any linux live cd/usb stick, boot from that and wipe your drive from the live envirnoment using a variety of tools/commands e.g.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

is as good as any command in linux and would wipe partition table and mbr as well as all data.

Cheers, Nick

 

Is there any GUI tool in linux as well?

 

One thing to keep in mind for anyone wishing to wipe a drive in case it is to try to solve a malware problem -

It has been said there exists certain kinds of malware that when the computer is powered the malware immediately goes into the memory (RAM) and if then the HDD is wiped perfectly and afterwards a new operating system is installed it is further said the malware in the memory goes back onto the hard drive and so a re-infection occurs. This being if the computer has been running the whole time.

If this is the case then simply remember to shut the computer completely off and pull the power from it between wiping and re-installing a new operating system for a brief amount of time so as to allow any trace of malware remaining in the memory to completely dissipate.

aigle - take a look at GParted that is usually provided with most Linux distributions. Screenshots found here.

 

Here is a good tutorial using hdparm, which uses the drive's internal erase command, and Gparted Live CD to erase a hard drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpZwTaOHdT4