Best hdd eraser or formatting

[vidyut]

Hi terence
dont bother with all the disk killing and nuking applications they never work as said and you can always recover data no matter what.
i have always relied on Winhex to do that job for me and hope it works for you too.

 

[Criminal]

Dunno if I have got some of the guys out here confused...
I do not want to encrypt anything.
I just want to DELETE everything from all my hdds - including C (which I will do later on another system).

All the methods posted in this thread, will in one way or another, erase the contents of the hard disks. Most of the tools won't touch the partition tables, MBR, FAT entries etc. So technically, your hard disk will still contain bits and pieces of information which could be retrieved by your smart software to trace previous installations.

Encrypting an empty drive won't cost you anything but any software trying to 'recover' data from specific sectors (which should only be accessed by the processes initiated by OS), will not be able to do so.

I have formatted/erased many tapes and hard drives and yet I am able to retrieve 'some' useful data. Of course, you need to go to such lengths as your smart and costly software isn't so lame to just rely on the hard disks. I guess you are not going to connect that PC to the internet afterwards (i.e., after erasing disks and installing software etc.).

I have legally used such software in the past and they are really 'tied' to specific hardware. They generally rely on some combination of Processor Id, Machine Id, Mac address etc. If the hard disks are involved then it has to deal with MBR or partition tables. People generally go for registry wipe/restore or OS re-install, which doesn't affect certain sectors on MBR and partition tables.

 

[terence_fdes]

I have paid careful attention to the various suggestions that you guys have put forth. I have been at work the whole of sunday and will continue thru the night till tomorrow evening.

As some of you may know, I am now based in Malaysia and this is my first attempt at trying out all these things.... here IT support is "zero" especially at my workplace ..... so I am dependent on my own 'tinkering' experience and support from TEians (it keeps me optimistic).

Successful re-formatting of the 4TB is crucial for me as this will form the main storage for all the media that I capture.

I cannot abandon this lengthy procedure and go home lest there is a system crash or the AC's trip .... and I am doomed.

@gauravH you have been of great help and really patient...... I really wish u were here. I managed to locate a system having ubuntu at our workplace ..... but was lost..... TeamViewer (I wish but cannot risk.... for office policies). I am in a city called Cyberjaya (Malaysias IT hub) but at the outskirt s.... ans its a royal pain to find simple solutions out here .... from living to spare pendrives etc (everything costs a BOMB)..... including simple drinking water.

 

[booo]

All the methods posted in this thread, will in one way or another, erase the contents of the hard disks. Most of the tools won't touch the partition tables, MBR, FAT entries etc. So technically, your hard disk will still contain bits and pieces of information which could be retrieved by your smart software to trace previous installations.

I dont know much about the software that you are using but dd command in linux is dumb enough to overwrite all the data including MBR and partition tables on the disk.
As I suggested earlier, you have to give the proper of value, for example if you specify /dev/sdb (second scsi raw drive) it will overwrite the entire drive with junk. on the other hand if you specify /dev/sdb1 it will only overwrite the first partition. Its not really necessary but you can execute the command multiple times just be sure that you wont get scary dreams. And 4tb drive should take few hours max with write through puts of around 60mBps.

using a live cd/usb is the best bet because it will not mount any of the external drives. on the other hand if you plan to use dd for windows, you will need to manually unmount the drives and then figure out the correct device names to pass to dd.

 

[singenaadam]

Eraser - is simple & easy to use, offers multiple options for erasing - incl. military grade erasing.

 

[terence_fdes]

MISSION SUCCESSFUL - I was able to install my software finally.

I spend a total of more than 72 hours using 3 different types of methods/softwares - Active@KillDisk; Paragon and some good old DOS commands to reformat 3 hdds [ a 4tb; and 1tb x 2] - this perhaps destroyed all traces of the earlier installations.

Let me also mention that I could not install my software on the same system - [PC] - after doing a fresh install of Windows 7 (it showed trial-version] .... so I went back and again used similar methods to again reformat the same hdd's and this time took 2 of them and began installation on ANOTHER PC [where windows was pre-installed] and Eureka ..... It worked.

Now however I am stuck with a new problem ...... Cannot get Dual Monitor output [this is very crucial for my work] ...... posted a new thread here http://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/quadro-4000-dual-monitor-not-working.153470/

So thanks guys on TE in helping me resolve the reformatting thing.

Regards

Terry

 

[random2]

There is one more option if one uses linux (or can be done using a live cd).

Use badblocks with -w option. This will write 4 patterns to the disk and tries to read them. And will delete all data as well as partitions.

Since you have already solved, this could just be for future ref