Software that wipes HD of data.

[Celticsfan]

I had a teacher who had some sort of s/w on a floppy where he just put in the floppy in a PC and it would wipe the HD clean of all data. Is anyone familiar with this product? If so, what is it?

 

[carnageX]

You can burn these to CD's instead of using floppies: Killdisk, Gparted (partitioning tool as well), and DBAN are what I have and/or have suggested before. Killdisk and DBAN write zeros to the entire drive, so all data is gone completely (no recovery).

 

[Celticsfan]

The killdisk one, does it wipe HD instantly?

 

[carnageX]

None of them wipe a drive "instantly." It takes time depending on the size of the drive. I think on my 320GB drive, it took me an hour and a half to wipe it.

 

[Celticsfan]

I know the proper way to dispose of a hdd is to have it "zeroed out" as you mention. I am just looking for something that will wipe out an OS and put on another one without waiting around.

Like I said my ex-prof had one that could do this and I was wondering if there was some s/w that could. And yes i know about fdisk before someones asks.

 

[carnageX]

Well there's quick format options...but those aren't really recommended. Can't say that I've heard of something that instantly "wipes" it out... Honestly don't know if that's possible.

 

[Celticsfan]

thx...i appreciate your help.

 

[KSoD]

Use GParted. But from what i remember you said you couldnt get it working right. Have you used Version 0.3.3? That is the easiest version with a Windows box.

 

[veedubfreak]

we use dban at work. It writes 1's to the drive 7 times, then erases it.

 

[KSoD]

DBan is great. But for speed i use Gparted as it is like a full format from within Windows. But for a really through format DBan is the best i have found.