erase (format) data on a hard disk before selling

ccc · 10-08-2013, 04:34 PM

hi

What is the best way to erase (format) all data on a hard disk before selling it?

smallpond · 10-08-2013, 07:25 PM

To be safe from everybody without a clean room and a government budget:

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=1M

Somebody with L33T skillz might recover some data from reassigned bad blocks, but there is no practical way to get more than that.

widget · 10-08-2013, 10:16 PM

If you have no data that is critical the dd command given by smallpond is sufficient.

I, personally would use shred after using that;

Code:

shred /dev/sdc

where, as with the dd command, "sdc" is the drive being security formatted.

I would probably also format the drive to something any system should be able to read like fat32 when done with all that.

unSpawn · 10-09-2013, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccc

What is the best way to erase (format) all data on a hard disk before selling it?

Using DBAN because even when selecting the quickest method it actually does a check before finishing. That's something a lot of people forget. Blanking disks does not make much sense if you're not going to test the end result IMHO.

smallpond · 10-09-2013, 09:47 AM

dd prints the number of blocks it thinks it wrote, but it doesn't hurt to check.
Formatting with FAT32 is a good idea. It will likely save explaining or returns if you sell to a Windows user.

If done on an SSD the above methods will leave the drive full. What's the best way to erase all the blocks on an SSD so there is no recoverable data and the drive is left in an empty state?

ccc · 10-15-2013, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unSpawn

Using DBAN because even when selecting the quickest method it actually does a check before finishing. That's something a lot of people forget. Blanking disks does not make much sense if you're not going to test the end result IMHO.

Can you pls give some more details howto use DBAN?

TobiSGD · 10-15-2013, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smallpond

If done on an SSD the above methods will leave the drive full. What's the best way to erase all the blocks on an SSD so there is no recoverable data and the drive is left in an empty state?

On SSDs you can use the ATA Secure Erase command, like described here: http://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccc

Can you pls give some more details howto use DBAN?

http://www.dban.org/documentation