Wiping your hard drive

 Wiping your hard drive

 

 hardiskdrive

 

Recent news reports have shown that fraudsters are able to find internet banking data stored on recycled PCs from UK consumers.

The information can be found on a PC’s hard disk, and can be recovered if the drive is not wiped before sending. 

Banking customers are recommended to use programmes to wipe their hard drives before they sell or give away their PC. 

Erasing software which over-writes data already contained on a hard disk should be used to ensure data from your hard disk isn't recoverable.

 

There are a number of free and commercial products available online, these include:
 

 

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 Important:

 

Wiping a hard drive is operating system independent. That means that you can use this same general process to wipe a hard drive if you have Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux, or any other PC operating system.

If you want something even more secure, go ahead and follow the hard drive wipe instructions below.


windows vista logo    or     windows7

 

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Here's How:


To wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all information. Deleting everything does not wipe a hard drive and formatting does not wipe a hard drive. You'll need to take an extra step to wipe the hard drive completely.   

When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you only delete the file system, making the data invisible but not gone. A file recovery program or special hardware can easily recover the information. 


If you want to make sure that your private information is gone forever, you'll need to wipe the hard drive using special software.

 

  • Follow these steps to completely wipe a hard drive:
  • Difficulty: Average
  • Time Required: It could take several minutes to several hours to wipe a hard drive

     

  1. Backup anything you want to keep. When the hard drive wipe is complete, there will be no way to get anything on the drive back.

     Important: Sometimes multiple drives exist on a single hard drive. You can view the drives (volumes) that sit on a hard drive from the Disk Management tool in Windows.

  2. Download a free data destruction program. DBAN is a useful tool to do this, it's easy to use and can wipe a hard drive from outside of Windows.

    However, if another programme in the list suits you better, by all means use it instead.

    Note: There are actually several ways to completely erase a hard drive but using data destruction software is the easiest and still allows the hard drive to be used again.

  3. Burn the ISO file to a disc or complete whatever steps are necessary to install the software or get the programme on a bootable disc.

     Note: Most data destruction programme utilize several different methods to wipe a hard drive. If you're curious about the effectiveness or methods used to complete the hard drive wipe, see Data Sanitization Methods.

  4. Wipe the hard drive according to the programme's instructions.

    Note: Most data destruction programme utilize several different methods to wipe a hard drive. If you're curious about the effectiveness or methods used to complete the hard drive wipe, see Data Sanitization Methods.
     

  5. After properly wiping a hard drive, you can be confident that whatever information was on the drive is now gone for good.
    You can now install Windows on the drive, create a new partition, sell or give away the hard drive, recycle or dispose of the hard drive, or whatever else you need to do.


    Top tips:

    Beginning in Windows Vista, the format process changed and a single write zero pass is applied to each standard (non-quick) format. In other words, a very basic hard drive wipe is performed during a format.

    If a single write zero pass is good enough for you, consider your drive wiped after a regular format in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you want something even more secure, go ahead and follow the hard drive wipe instructions above. Keep in mind, too, that this is a wipe of just the partition you're formatting. If you have more than one partition on a physical hard drive, you'll need to format those additional drives as well if you want to consider the entire physical disk as "wiped".

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More Wipe Hard Drive Related Information • Free Data Destruction Software • Ways to Completely Erase a Hard Drive

Source information: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/wipe-hard-drive.htm