Ristof

At the moment I am using Killdisk to completly wipe the hard drives on PC's that have ran out of lease before sending them back but the process takes to long to wipe

Does anyone here have any freeware programs that does the same this as kill disk that can be made bootable to completly wipe the sectors of the hard drive.

If you know of any that are really good that don't take too long that arn't freeware I am happy to hear those too.

To give you an indication on how long kill disk takes lets say a 40GB hard drive can take over an hour to do. When you have up to ten to do at one time it can take a while to get through them all

Thanks

Terrister

the hardware team recommends dban more than any other.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

And it's free.

Volt-Schwibe

sadly, the amount of time it takes is directly related to how well you want the data destroyed.

if you use a fast tool like killdisk, (40 gigs per hour is fast) then the data can easily be recovered, even with free software. at this point it's no different than just using western digital's low level format tool.

something more secure, like derik's boot and nuke, can take even longer, but is more assured that data will not be recovered. (except in cases where the fbi wants to see it, as they can see it almost no matter what you do.)

question really is, do you really want the data shredded, or do you want it to be fast?

i was once told the only way to make sure a disk is 100% unrecoverable, was to open it, and remove the platters, and sand them with sand paper.

since then, everything i've seen and heard makes me completely beleive that.

Cellus

The DoD standard in completely destroying data on hard drives is to first wipe them using a DoD-standard wipe at least 8 times (7 times or less and the information is easily recoverable) followed by actual physical destruction of the entire drive. Secure wipes are not completely thorough, as even when you run a DoD wipe, the read/write head can miss certain extraneous areas on the platters that can contain data. They can take an electron microscope and recover the data if they wanted to, it just takes more time and money for them.

This I learned during a lecture speech from a President of a private data security company. Take his word for it.

Volt-Schwibe

this was what i was told about why sandpaper works.

no way they will be able to do any recovery on a pile of filings.

Ristof

Thanks for that, now I need to find a PC to try it on

I had a quick look around but didn't find what I was after, do you know where I can find a tech page on this software that says what it does do.

Thanks

uripyores

http://dban.sourceforge.net/download/readme.txt

crazijoe

Bfh..

Cellus

That would literally work too.

Basically dban has several different algorithms you can choose from to wipe the drive - everything from the US DoD standard to even the Canadian RCMP standard. Personally I prefer the US DoD standard when wiping as you can be very thorough with it.

Ristof

Has anyone used Wipedrive Pro

Chevy

BCWipe is another good option ....

Ristof

How do you get Dban to load on startup

I put the disk in, made sure the boot order was CD first but nothing
Is there something I have missed

I downloaded the CD ISO file, double clicked on it to copy to CD

Ristof

Can BC Wipe auto run from startup or do you have to install it on the PC you wish to wipe first

I am after software that can boot when the PC boots

Volt-Schwibe

if you chose "copy to cd" you actually created a cd containing the iso.

meaning, you didn't use the iso to create a cd, you actually just used xp to create a standard mode 1 data cd that will show nothing inside it but an iso file.

to actually create a working boot and nuke, you will need a burning tool that understands ISO formats.

clonecd, alcohol, nero, roxio, nti, and many others can do this.

Cellus

Dban runs at boot from disk without having to install anything on the computer or boot into any OS. Once you've burned it properly to a CD as per Volt-Schwibe's instructions, it'll work like a dream.

No, no I am not biased. Never. Go away.

Ristof

I double clicked on the file so it open and copied to a CD itself through Roxio

I had a read though the instructions and all it says is to boot from CD, download the ISO file and to put it on a CD double click on the file.

I tried it again this morning but still it wont boot at startup.

It seems like I am missing the nessesary files for it to boot on startup. Would omeone beable to send me a list of the files that should be on the CD. Don't worry about going into folders

Thanks

Volt-Schwibe

sorry, i misunderstood you.

just a second and i can get a listing of the files on the cd.

Volt-Schwibe

without going into detail about the contents of each folder, here it is.

Attached Images

untitled6.jpg (62.7 KB, 8 views)

Ristof

Thanks for that - There the files that I have on the CD

Is there anything else I need to do to get the CD to run or do I just put it in like the rest of them

By any chance does this rpogram not load if there is no partitions on the hard drive.

I am testing a few different programs and when it got to test this one I had no operating system on the PC. I am loading an operating system on it now so I will try once that is loaded

Thanks again and I will let you know how it goes

Volt-Schwibe

actually, it doesn't matter at all if there is partitions on the drive.

i myself run it start to finish, and then i reboot, and run it again.

by the second run, there's no trace of partitions anymore, so i am positive that they don't need to be there for it to run.

i'm wondering if your cd-rom is failing to be atapi compatible.

i am 99% sure that it's the atapi standard that allows these cd's to boot.