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Wiping Portable Hard Drive

16 years ago

I have an external hard drive that I've removed all of the important files from and deleted the rest. I want to give the drive away, but want to wipe it first. I know about Dariks Boot And Nuke (DBAN) program, but it operates from bootable media, and I have read a number of postings from people who accidentally messed up their internal hard drive while trying to wipe another drive. So, what other suggestions do you have?

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Comments (4)

owbist
16 years ago
Remember that quite often those who wipe the wrong drive never followed the correct procedure. You drive will have a letter associated with it, as long as you know that then you would be good to go. You can even give the external hard drive a name to aid in avoiding confusion.

Assuming you have nothing ultra secret on the drive you could probably get away with formatting the drive twice but use the full format not the quick version.

If you want better then perhaps visit the maker's site for a free program.

What about the backup software that may have been included when you bought the computer? You will wipe that with a format
kudzu9
Original Author
16 years ago
owbist-
Thanks. I'm fairly computer savvy and know about drive letter assignments. It's just that I have had to restore drives a couple of times due to other issues -- which is never fun -- so that's why I am nervous about booting up on my main computer with something as powerful as DBAN.
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marooma
16 years ago
You might try the portable version of Eraser at the link below. It has the capability to use the DOD preferred wiping method. HTH.

Terry

Here is a link that might be useful: Eraser Portable - securely erase your data
bpgreen
16 years ago
If I were you, I would just hang on to the old drive.

Occam's razor is a useful thing sometimes.

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