How to format my hard drive so I can sell it?

[Murkon]

Ok, I'm selling my laptop today and was wondering if a normal format would be safe enough?

I don't have any extremely personal files on it or anything...but if I need to use a program to format can someone please suggest some to me?

Thanks in advance.

-Murk

[Falls Included]

format just clears the MBR, all the files are still there. for complete security, download the HD util for your drive manufacturer, and select the option is something along the line of "re-zero drive" which takes all the bits of information (the 1s and 0s), and makes them all 0

[OldMX]

Autoclave (http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/) is your best friend in those cases.

OldMX

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by fallsincluded
format just clears the MBR,

and the partition table (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/format.htm) ;)
but your right its all there for recovery
autoclave will zero the drive, but even that wouldnt stop recovery if it fell into determined hands

I use an ap called Wipeout (http://www.securitysoftware.cc/apps.html)
which up till the other day was freeware, but seems a bit too popular cause its now $20, among its other attributes it would overwrite freespace on a HDD (from inside windows) up to 32 times with various data patterns

if you follow the links at the bottom of Autoclave & DBAN (http://dban.sourceforge.net/), you can probably find similar aps, if Im not mistaken a government level wipe is 12 patterns (all zero all one various patterns)


depends on how paranoid you are (or are required to be)

they will never get my deathray, Bruhahahaha

:p

[rballantyne]

Eraser
Still the best, still free:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Prevents both software AND hardware recovery. Tons of options for how to erase data. You can even code your own overwriting algorithm if you are so inclined.

Source Code:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/source.php

Good write-up on secure data removal:
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/full_papers/gutmann/