White Canyon WipeDrive 5 PRO

[shedracer]

I will be selling a couple of laptops soon and want to wipe clean the hard drives. I have been looking around on the net for the relevant software to use and although there are cheaper products, I think the product offered by White Canyon, WipeDrive 5 PRO, would do the job (trusted by many large corporations and U.S. Department of Defense Approved). This version allows upto 20 PC to be wiped clean, so although I'll only need it for 3 at the moment, it'll cover future needs. It will cost $99.99 = about £66.

Question for those IT people on here, what do you think?

Cheers
Paul

 

[cookie]

killdisk, it's free

 

[sanqhar]

killdisk, it's free

Killdisk.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22920-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

The main difference with these is the number of passes the program makes.
The US Department of Defense standard is something like 3 passes with random characters (Google it) and a verification pass.

I think Killdisk offers a choice, although it might not be random characters.

There is nothing to stop you doing it more than once to be safe.

Also remember that it can take a long time for a single pass depending on the processor speed and the size of the hard disc.

Remember also that unless you set it to "Wipe free space" such programmes will wipe everything including all the software, so you may have to reload Windows if you hope to sell a viable computer.

If you are really paranoid about security then the only safe thing to do is remove the hard drive and physically destroy it.

tom

 

[Darkstar]

Dban boot and nuke works a treat for me, loads of options and presets, boots from cd.

Steve

 

[shugie]

Dban boot and nuke works a treat for me, loads of options and presets, boots from cd.

Steve

Yup, that's what I use, although generally I take old discs apart and smash the platters up. Because I can.

 

[shedracer]

Cheers lads for your thoughts.

 

[Dickieboy]

One has to wonder who do you think might be interested in buying said laptops and their reasons for doing so.
The simplest thing to do would be to delete all partitions, standard format or low level if that makes you happier then just reinstall an op. system

 

[IainMac]

Formating alone won't clear it over writing with new o/s will help but only the bits overwritten and these still may be recovered . You need at least 3 overwrites will full data not just nulls. Erasure , google it , isnfree last time I looked , best way is to mount drives in a USB drive caddy and erase them from main pc. That way booted laptop os doesn't get in the way.

 

[shedracer]

I only have a fairly basic pc knowledge when it comes to these things, so I just want to ensure my personal info, that is on mine and my other family members pc's, are deleted properly.

So I want a simple to use, but guaranteed method to remove all data. If its free, then great, but it has to be straight forward and easy to use, so if I have to pay for the software, then I don't mind.

Some people might think this is over the top, but you cant be too careful these days, with identity theft. Just trying to protect myself and family members.