Disk wiping

[Retiredbill]

A friend of mine is moving into retirement housing and is getting rid of their desktop for a tablet. I offerred to wipe the disk for them but have noy been able to get a software that will do the ob without buying the pro version. I tried Killdisk but it will do only one pass and apparently will not wipe a partition that contains the operating system, They have only the one partitioin that contains the entire drive. Do you have any suggestion for a software that will do the job?

 

[Boozad]

You could boot from the installation media and follow setup through until you reach the option to format the available hard drives.

 

[Retiredbill]

I don't want to simply format. They have sensitive information that could be recovered by someone else from a formt. I'd prefer to use the DOD method that uses 3 passes. The first one is all zeroes, the second is all ones and the third is random. Any suggestions?

 

[Sir George]

I don't want to simply format. They have sensitive information that could be recovered by someone else from a formt. I'd prefer to use the DOD method that uses 3 passes. The first one is all zeroes, the second is all ones and the third is random. Any suggestions?

My experience has been that most private parties are overly concerned about data recovery. The likelihood of someone, a private party, actually trying to recover data is relatively small; on the other hand it could occur. So, if the data is that sensitive and you are seeking the best method to erase the data to the most unrecoverable state, I would advise paying the small fee, usually around $40, for more sophisticated software. Also, you could just buy a new 500/GB drive for around $48 and be done with it eliminating any concerns of data recovery.

 

[gregrocker]

Boot into System Recovery Options on the Win7 installation media or System Repair Disk to open a Command Line and run Diskpart Clean All Command.

This must be done from the disk and not the OS or F8 Recovery Options or it will generate the type of error you saw. Only Wiley Coyote can erase himself.

 

[Retiredbill]

I guess the best bet will be to take the drive out and use a sledge hammer the destroy the drive. The friends are very paranoid about soemone recovering their data. If there is no software alternative, then that is what I must do.

 

[gregrocker]

You must have missed my post, Bill. I just gave you the command to overwrite all data with zeroes which makes data unrecoverable by all but forensics means.

If you want even more overwrites then use one of the more advanced Wipes from Partition Wizard boot disk.