Viewing 16 posts - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)
  • Nuking a hard drive
  • JulianA
    Free Member

    I have a faulty external hard drive that I want to nuke before I take it back to Maplins. I have formatted it but I want to overwrite the whole disk before it goes anywhere.

    Does anyone have any recommendations for free software to overwrite everything on the disk with ones and zeroes?

    De-Gaussing is not an option and there’s nothing indecent on it, before someone asks!

    vrapan
    Free Member

    You have a friend with a Mac? Ask them to erase them with a 10 pass random bits. Will take forever (if the drive is huge it will take forever and a day) but it is fairly secure.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    errm, if it’s faulty surely you won;t be able to overwrite it?

    there’s no easy way to do this if the disk is having read/write issues other than with a big magnet.

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    neilsonwheels
    Free Member

    File shredder .

    JulianA
    Free Member

    Unfortunately no handy friends with a Mac.

    Yes, it will take ages as it’s a 2tb drive! But it’s worth the wait, from what I’ve read…

    JulianA
    Free Member

    wwaswas – Member

    errm, if it’s faulty surely you won;t be able to overwrite it?

    there’s no easy way to do this if the disk is having read/write issues other than with a big magnet.

    Yes, I can overwrite it as it’s only occasionally faulty (sounds odd, I know…)

    Big magnets at work but too much grief to get it there!

    Thanks Neil, I’ll give it a look

    5thElefant
    Free Member

    Just download 2tb worth of octoporn. That should do the trick. Or is that the problem?

    cranberry
    Free Member

    Occasionally faulty – could it be getting too hot ?

    Stick it in a PC with a desk fan blowing over it whilst you try to wipe it.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    DBAN.

    Conqueror
    Free Member

    DBAN and Killdisk

    both of which can be found on this useful CD

    http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

    JulianA
    Free Member

    5thElefant – Member

    Just download 2tb worth of octoporn. That should do the trick. Or is that the problem?

    Thanks, I should have guessed that someone would say that!

    Thanks Cougar, I’ll give that a look too.

    @Cranberry – don’t think it’s getting too hot… Will bear that in mind.

    GlitterGary
    Free Member

    I just took my computer to PC World.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    “too”?

    You can use DBAN, or you can do it wrong. (-:

    Spongebob
    Free Member

    Darik’s Boot and Nuke-DBAN

    Run the 7 pass version for military standard obliteration of data.

    GlitterGary
    Free Member

    On second thoughts, don’t take your computer to PC World.

    JulianA
    Free Member

    @Cougar and Spongebob – will DBAN let me choose the disk I want to nuke?

Viewing 16 posts - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)

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