securely erasing HDD's

HAVOC · 05 Jan 2015

I'd like a free program to securely erase a couple HDD's before selling or giving them away. I'll be using my laptop to do this and an external HDD/SSD dock that is USB3: StarTech.com USB 3.0 SATA III Hard Drive Docking Station SSD / HDD with UASP - Newegg.com

**Pauly** · 05 Jan 2015

You can use windows inbuilt diskpart software to do this from a command prompt
May not be the quickest (not sure) but its free and easy, just be sure to run "clean all" and not just "clean" as that will not securely overwrite the data

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

HAVOC · 05 Jan 2015

Thank you Pauly.

HAVOC · 25 Jan 2015

So I'm using diskpart to erase my HDD's. How long should it take to erase a 1TB WD black drive?

sandravlado · 25 Jan 2015

Hi Havoc.

I would suggest to use MHDD tool. It is free and very useful, not just in writing all zeroes but also it helps in diagnosing and fixing the bad sectors (well, more isolating to not to use those anymore).

Here's the link:

MHDD

Layback Bear · 25 Jan 2015

HAVOC said:

So I'm using diskpart to erase my HDD's. How long should it take to erase a 1TB WD black drive?

Please read the tutorial Pauly posted again. It states.

NOTE: See the green INFO box at the top of the tutorial for more information about this command. This command will wipe the HDD, and perform a secure erase. "Clean All" takes about an hour per 320 GB to finish running. It's best to only use this command if you wanted to help make sure that the data on the HDD cannot be recovered say when giving or selling the HDD to another person.