Resolved Erasing defective Dell Hard Drive before returning

My son has a Dell Precision laptop. The hard drive is going out, so Dell is sending him a replacement. Before returning the defective drive, I suggested that he erase the drive first. He has an Seagate external USB hard drive and a CD/DVD drive. What do you suggest to wipe this drive as clean as possible, without having to purchase a program to do it? I have heard of Secure Erase, but I'm not sure if this will work without a floppy drive. What suggestions do you have? Step-by-step instructions would be appreciated by him, also. He is too busy at college to spend too much time on this project.

 

Have a look through these
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads12.html

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but those programs are primarily for cleaning up files on a hard drive, not wiping a total drive clean so that no data can be recovered. I told him to use Eraser to wipe out all sensitive data before his drive quits completely. What do people generally do when they return a hard drive under warranty? When the drive that had my business files on it was corrupted and had to be replaced, I was allowed to just unscrew the cover from the hard drive and return that. I may suggest that he see if Dell will accept that. I'd like to hear what other people have done.

 

In my opinion it depends on what might be sensitive. If there is anything that might be sensitive, buy a "wiper" to be sure. I would use it if I had used internet banking (which I don't).

I use the Paragon disk wiping utility at work, it's not free.

If you want 1 (one) overwrite of the data, a hard disk drive manufacturer's low-level (zero) format utility, probably bundled with it's other testing utilities, will wipe the drive. It writes zeroes onto each Bit.

Check if something might be sensitive on the drive. How much wiping do you need?

If the drive is failing you might not be able to overwrite all of it anyway. The erasing program might stop when it encounters whatever has made the drive fail.

Matt
Edit: If nothing seems to be sensitive, just delete the partitions on the disk, that will make finding any data somewhat hard, at the least.

 

G'DAy "Barry ",

I tend to Nuke the drive and you can use one of these free utility to do so, which is one of many available.

How to help make sure all data is erased on hard drive.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000520.htm

If you don't like this selection of free ones, try any of these from the Google search result of: "How Do I Nuke My Hard Drive" http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&sou...=f&oq=nuking+a+hard+drive&fp=12ccb42eb063b709

Or use 2 of the free ones to make sure!

pcbugfixer

 

Directions for creating a DBAN CD or DVD to wipe the drive.

Download DBAN for recent Intel and AMD computers listed under Download.

 

"Darik's Boot And Nuke" This is the 1st and 2nd, etc option in the Google search result I had already posted !

pcbugfixer

 

I agree with using Eraser and I note it uses DBAN technologies, but with a GUI front end.

 

Yes you did. I just supplied the information to create a bootable CD/DVD due to the OP doesn't have a floppy drive.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll pass this information on to my son.

 

DBAN (already said)
Active@ Kill Disk
dd command line in a live linux distro

Lots of great options to wipe drives.