Good freeware utility to wipe laptop HDD

nkaufman · 22 Sep 2015

Hello,

My laptop HDD is failing and am getting assistance on another post for that. Since WD is replacing the HDD (only been a year since it was purchased) and sent me a new one as an advance replacement, I am required to send the old failing HDD back.

Was wondering what utility is recommended to wipe the HDD before I send it back to WD.

Thanks,

GokAy · 22 Sep 2015

I haven't used it but I guess DBAN is popular.
Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

DBAN users should be aware of some product limitations, including:

No guarantee of data removal (e.g. DBAN does not detect or securely erase SSDs)
No audit-ready reporting for regulatory compliance
Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)
No customer support or regular software updates

nkaufman · 25 Sep 2015

GokAy said:

I haven't used it but I guess DBAN is popular.
Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

DBAN users should be aware of some product limitations, including:

No guarantee of data removal (e.g. DBAN does not detect or securely erase SSDs)
No audit-ready reporting for regulatory compliance
Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)
No customer support or regular software updates

Thanks.

Any points to keep in mind while using dban? Any to-do or not to-do pointers?

I'll be using to attach my failing HDD via USB and use dban cd to erase external HDD. Will there be an issue with this scenario?

Lady Fitzgerald · 25 Sep 2015

While don't like CCleaner itself, it does have an excellent wiping utility. The minimal number of passes will be plenty.

Callender · 25 Sep 2015

nkaufman said:

Any points to keep in mind while using dban? Any to-do or not to-do pointers?

I'll be using to attach my failing HDD via USB and use dban cd to erase external HDD. Will there be an issue with this scenario?

I've used DBAN (booted from USB) and it will erase ALL connected drives so yes there is an issue. Also I needed to change SATA Configuration from AHCI to IDE and reboot before it would work.

See the tutorial here for a way of wiping selected drives:

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Layback Bear · 25 Sep 2015

Another great tutorial by Brink you could read through.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

GokAy · 26 Sep 2015

Callender, thanks for the heads up. I will try to remember those. Also bookmarked the tutorial.

Layback Bear · 26 Sep 2015

Oopps I didn't see the tutorial in Chris's post.

Excel21 · 26 Sep 2015

They have some free tools over at Macrorit Useful Free Tools from Macrorit Do Big Favor for You. Their Disk Partition Wiper is pretty cool. Just hook the failing HDD up a running computer, delete all the partitons, create one large one, format it, fire up Macrorit Disk Partition Wiper, click Fill sectors with zero&one and wipe it. It's surprising fast, wipe 500 Gb drive in a half hour or less. With the zero&one algorithm someone would have to do a hardware recovery to get any data off the drive, very unlikely. Oh it leaves the drive RAW so you have to create a partition and format it after wiping it. Cool tool man, I use it all the time.

nkaufman · 26 Sep 2015

Thanks for the information, definitely need to look at the various options that have been suggested.

One question that I have is - is there a limitation of these tools while wiping a failing HDD (that has bad sectors, reallocated sectors etc). Do not want to start wiping and have the software croak in the middle because it cannot handle the above kinds of sectors.

Thanks again for the information.