Erase data off a HDD permanently...

[vomacka]

I am looking for a good freeware program that will permanently erase the data off my three external HDD's. (These are not boot-able drives with OS, just 1Tb data drives)

Any recommendations?

Scott

 

[Exabyte]

DBAN is the best program to wipe a hard drive

 

[Kshipper]

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) indeed will do it but it is going to take a long long time to do 3 drives. That's a lot of electricity running a computer that long. One other wrinkle is that if the drive(s) have any bad sectors, DBAN will barf on that because it is trying to write zeros. It has been years since I tired DBAN. Now I just remove the screws to expose the platters and give 'em smack with a hammer (protect your eyes, some platters are glass). If you want to use the drives again personally then you can just erase and write new data on them.

 

[martinsmith]

Navigate to the files or folders that you want to securely erase
Right click on the files and/or folders and an Eraser menu will appear
Highlight and click Erase in the Eraser menu
Click Start Run type cmd and press OK or Enter (Return)
Navigate to where you have SDelete downloaded.

 

[SNGX1275]

Navigate to the files or folders that you want to securely erase
Right click on the files and/or folders and an Eraser menu will appear
Highlight and click Erase in the Eraser menu
Click Start Run type cmd and press OK or Enter (Return)
Navigate to where you have SDelete downloaded.

Its a month since the last reply.... But what you suggested is not going to work without Eraser installed...