Is it possible to securely wipe a HD prior to selling it on? I know there are lots of commercial tools, but do they really work? Is there a foolproof method?
oooooo, i havnt been aksed about a boot and nuke ina loooong time i personally do not recommend selling a used hard disk, the best thing to do with em is to burn em (fire burn) however, i do believe there are freeware tools that claim to be able to erase your drive completely and irrecoverably, so you can only try: http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml ^^ just a resource with a list of programs http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_96_19893.html http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_96_2778.html http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_102_10039.html ^^ take your pick
Also get ccleaner(free) and go to the options button then the settings tab and click secure deletion(nsa 7 passes).Though this won't work alone in conjunction with those that phantom69 offered it will help better delete the history and tracks left behind(which is what your worried about right?).
i would just use a live linux cd and load that up on one of your boots...it would do a few various formats and types of dummy files that windows would never be able to comprehend.
fdisk & format the hd a few times will ususally prevent average person from retrieving info. other than that trash the hd with a hammer.
Use a strong (commercial type) magnet to whipe it clean, Neodymium magnets work the best for this use. Give the drive a number of passes, then do a low level format, run the magnet over the disc again, and do a second lowlevel format. After that, pretty much anything on the disc will be gone, with only traces of data left that would be recoverable, but nothing worth mentioning.
