Wiping a hard drive *enough*

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Qathe123

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Aug 1, 2013
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I'm going to sell two HP laptops, one with Windows 7 on it, the other 8. I've read online that with these, a very basic wipe of the hard drive is done when you reformat them. If I repeatedly do a reset on Windows 8 and use recovery disks on the Windows 7 machine, should that be good enough to be pretty sure personal data has been deleted from these machines? I'm hesitant to use something like Windows Eraser or KillDisk in case I messed it up.
 
Solution
USAFRet
The ideal solution is to use DBAN, and then reinstall the OS.

There was a post here just the other day in which a guy did a recovery disk thing with Win7, and was able to recover data from the original install.
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house70

house70

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Apr 21, 2010
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Formatting does not erase data, just marks the sectors as available for re-writing.
I use Killdisk for any and all wiping needs. The free version (that also allows one to create a bootable media for system disk erasing) gives a one-pass zeroing of the drive/partition that needs to be wiped. If really paranoid, can run it 2-3 times and there is no way anyone could retrieve anything from that.
 
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Dark Lord of Tech

Dark Lord of Tech

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Aug 18, 2009
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I use DBAN myself , when i sell a computer.


How to Use DBAN

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN automatically and completely deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

DBAN's website is http://www.dban.org/.
How to Use DBAN to Securely Erase a Hard Disk Drive

Turn on computer and boot from the DBAN CD.
The DBAN application opens. DBAN is a simple, text-only application.
You will see a boot: prompt and a menu of options.
Press the Enter key to start DBAN in interactive mode.
DBAN continues to boot. This will take a few moments.
You will see a screen listing Options, Statistics, and Disks and Partitions.
Leave the defaults for Options.
From the Disks and Partitions list, select the hard drive you want deleted.
Move the cursor up and down using the J and K keys, and select the drive with the Spacebar.
When the drive you want to erase is selected, press F10 to start the wipe.
The time required to wipe your drive will depend on the size of the drive. DBAN offers an estimate on the Statistics pane.



http://www.it.cornell.edu/security/depth/practices/dban.cfm

Disk will need to be formatted after using this process.
 
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house70

house70

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in killdisk's case, once you download and install the program, it will have the option to create a bootable CD with the program on it. It takes one CD, but I could not tell you off the top of my head what the exact size of that program is on that CD, all I know is it fits on one with room to spare.
 
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house70

house70

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Didn't try CCleaner, I didn't know they offered a bootable media solution to wipe entire system drives. If they do, more power to them.
 
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MidnightDistort

MidnightDistort

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Don't think there's a bootable option but since it's available i just wipe any drives with the highest level several times. Probably end up killing the drive instead of trying to remove any sensitive data lol.

 
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