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How Do I Nuke My Hard Drive?

Beady

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Beady
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I've finished moving into my new computer. The old one is going to charity. How do I nuke the hard drive? I can't do it from inside Windows, including from the command prompt in the DOS window.

I know there's a way to boot into DOS, but how do I manage it?
 
"Nuke", as in completely destroy all data there?

A. Big. Fat. Magnet.
 
I think what you’re looking for is a program that will perform a binary wipe on your whole hard drive, which comes with a boot image (the os of the image wouldn't really matter). If you can't find one by this evening I'll see what I can dig up.

LLH
 
Make a windows ME bootdisk.

Boot it up, select any of the starting options.

When you get the DOS prompt, type "format c:" (where c is your hard drive) and hit enter

If you have partitions you want to remove, type "fdisk"

Unless you're looking for a extreme security wipe...
 
If you really want to give it away just buy a super cheap 20 gig to stick in there. You can get used HD's for chump change on eBay its worth it for the peace of mind, you never know whos going to end up with it. I suspect 2nd hand computer shops are into identity theft.
 
If you have any version of a Windows install CD, boot off that disk and start the setup process.

When you get to the point of selecting what partition to insall on, you will be able to delete the current partion, create a new one, and if you want.. format it.

Then just abort the install.
 
Alternatively...

During bootup, press the F8 key to get to the startup option menu. There (depending on what version of Windows) you will see a "Restart in MSDOS mode".

From there you can either Fdisk to kill the partition or just Format it.
 
I'm not sure some of the suggestions listed above will work (the non-buying-software ones). Remember: unless you ACTUALLY overwrite each space on the hard drive with a 1 or 0 (either randomly generated, or ancient Latin text to raise the dead), then whatever was on the hard drive, will STILL be there, even if no tables points to it. And a hard drive reading program could still recover it.

The only way to destroy data on a magnetic medium is to overwrite with something else.
 
From what I've heard, just overwriting the data once will not do the trick, especially against folks like the NSA. I had used Autoclave before (http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave-discontinued/), and in the FAQ there's a blurb about the various erase levels:

What's with the levels 1 through 5? Which level do I want to use?

All levels erase the disk completely. The only difference is how difficult it would be for someone to recover data from the disk using sophisticated recovery tools (including scanning tunneling electron microscopes). Level 1 is the fastest, level 5 is the slowest. Level 5 is the most secure, level 1 is the least secure. I personally couldn't recover anything from a disk that had been cleaned with level 1, but someone with the know-how and a few thousand dollars could. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I doubt the NSA could recover anything from a disk that had been cleaned with level 5. Level 3 meets most corporate and nonclassified government erasure specifications. Here's what each level does:

* 1 - A single pass of all zero.
* 2 - One pass of random data followed by one pass of all zero.
* 3 - Three passes: all zero, all one, all zero.
* 4 - Ten passes, some of which are random, followed by one of zero.
* 5 - 25 passes, three of which are random.

Note that none of these levels verifies that data is actually getting written to the drive. That will be a future addition, as will a level which conforms to DoD specifications.
Click to expand...
 
bignickel said:
I'm not sure some of the suggestions listed above will work (the non-buying-software ones). Remember: unless you ACTUALLY overwrite each space on the hard drive with a 1 or 0 (either randomly generated, or ancient Latin text to raise the dead), then whatever was on the hard drive, will STILL be there, even if no tables points to it. And a hard drive reading program could still recover it.

The only way to destroy data on a magnetic medium is to overwrite with something else.
Click to expand...


Since the OP says nothing about wanting to overwrite every byte on the drive, why jump to that conclusion?

Do you honestly expect the charity on the recieving end to go all James Bond with trying to read it?

Further evidence that the OP was not refering to an attempt to overwrite every byte would be that he mentions having tried to do it from within a DOS prompt, and that he was trying to boot into DOS. That is highly suggestive that what he was trying to do was execute a Format command on the active partition.
 
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from that article:
* 1 - A single pass of all zero.
* 2 - One pass of random data followed by one pass of all zero.
* 3 - Three passes: all zero, all one, all zero.
* 4 - Ten passes, some of which are random, followed by one of zero.
* 5 - 25 passes, three of which are random.
Click to expand...


I've seen free utilities that will do 3 passes (0,1,0). Couldn't you just run that several times to achieve higher security?

LLH
 
Molinaro said:
Since the OP says nothing about wanting to overwrite every byte on the drive, why jump to that conclusion?
Click to expand...

Because the OP may not understand that killing the partition and doing a simple format c: frequently doesn't actually wipe any data and its easily recoverable. It's a good idea for this type of question to recommend a total wipe AND explain why.

Do you honestly expect the charity on the recieving end to go all James Bond with trying to read it?
Click to expand...

Nope, don't expect it. But I've seen it. Many charity organizations have voluteer help that like to sniff around just for the heck of it when they get bored. Many donations go through many hands before finally landing somewhere, i wouldn't trust everyone in that delivery chain.

Better safe than sorry, and it's not like this is an expensive option there are many free tools available.
 
LordoftheLeftHand said:
from that article:



I've seen free utilities that will do 3 passes (0,1,0). Couldn't you just run that several times to achieve higher security?

LLH
Click to expand...

Several passes of random writes is best, but more than 3 probably unneeded. If you're really that paranoid about the data on the drive that 3 passes won't protect you're best bet is to completely destroy the drive (open that sucker up and smash the platters).
 
Write 0 to all, then 1, then 2, then 3, up to 11111111..11 in binary for whatever size you're writing, then 0s again.
 
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