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#11
If piece of mind is what you're after, why not just destroy the drive and get rid of it? I didn't even realize there was a market for used hard drives...
If piece of mind is what you're after, why not just destroy the drive and get rid of it? I didn't even realize there was a market for used hard drives...
$60.00 for used $50.00 hard drive? Western Digital - My Passport Essential 500GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive - Black - WDBAAA5000ABK-NESN That might be wishful thinking?
Really, any of the programs already listed here will do what you want; however, whether or not any data is retrieved really isn't up to you. If someone really wanted to read that drive, they're going to read that drive. The only way to prevent that happening with certainty is to destroy the drive... hence the nail.
If you're giving it to some school or selling it to a friend, you're probably reasonably safe. If however you toss it up on ebay... well, who knows? I mean, who buys used hard drives? Mechanical drives only live a few years anyway. I'd be real suspicious of some guy stocking up on old drives.
pffttt I didnt realize they go for $50 new.
I'm just going to run Eraser & give it to a friend & just buy the 1TB on it's own I guess.
Hi there
You don't really need any specialized programs
What I would do is
1) Format it as per windows.
2) Download a Linux Live CD
3) Get the linux system to format the HDD as ext3 and then write X'00' (Binary zeros) on EVERY sector -- not just the file areas.
(DEBIAN type distros -- Ubuntu is one of these have a WIPE command which will do just this. Knoppix is another Debian based distro -- also good).
You don't need to spend money on it.
Incidentally why SELL the 500GB disk -- there isn't much of a market for these -- a NEW one is only around 35 - 40 USD so who on earth would trust in committing their data to a USED USB HDD.
You can even get powered USB small 2 TB disks for around 90 USD (thats 2 * 1000 GB on ONE drive).
In any case you will soon find that you can NEVER have too much storage space -- I'm now on my 3rd 2 TB Disk !!!!!. I still have a few 500 and 1TB portable small USB drives too that I use for backups / archives.
I'd keep the 500 GB disk and use it for archiving / backking up some of your data such as music etc and of course image the OS.
Cheers
jimbo
I spend like $1.75 on a small Torx wrench and ever since I sleep fine
No seriously. use jimbo's idea with the Knopix life CD. That works