We have about 40 machines with Windows on them (no user data) that need Windows blown away in order to surplus them. No user data, so don't need a high-grade wipe, just something quick to make the Windows install unusable. I'm familiar with DBAN, but that would require hooking up a keyboard and monitor to each machine and letting it run its course.

Does anyone know of a quicker solution that's free/Free? I know they sell EBAN which does exactly what I want - allow the machines to PXE boot, wipe them, and generate per-machine reports - but they don't even give prices on their website.

I'm considering using DBAN (GPL'ed) to build something, but would rather use something pre-existing if possible. Any ideas?

You can use killdisk. Just a GPL'ed bootdisk that does the same. It's more manual an less fun than a networked solution. But it does the trick nicely.


Is there money in that?? I'm gonna be rich!
It's possible, and not too hard, to build a server that does what you describe over an ad-hoc network. All you need is to properly configure dnsmasq to establish a PXE boot environment, add a kernel (any old kernel) in the mix, and the real magic is in the initrd. That took me a bit of tweaking and testing and a lot of coffee before it worked. But now I have an initrd that will take anything you can do in bash as payload, or alternatively runs custom programs.

Doesn't that yet exist? Hmmmm......

Do all your systems support PXE boot? most of the old systems I recently de-commissioned did not support PXE boot.

Wouldn't you have to configure the systems to boot from the network, requiring you to connect a keyboard and mouse anyway ? I know PXE boot for the systems I have that support it is NOT the first or even second boot option configured on those systems.

Since my case was a once off, that we won't be repeating for several years, using DBAN was the easiest method. Some of those older systems took a considerable amount of time to wipe relatively small hard drives.

Let us know if you find something that works, and fulfills all your requirements.


Best of luck.

Most of our systems (these are from student computing labs) are setup to be imaged over the network. There were a few (I did 24 total) that hadn't had any problems, and weren't setup to PXE boot, but that was a quick fix.

I'll be posting full info on this on my blog, but I ended up using Cobbler, which had a System Retirement wiki article, to make a the DBAN disk image PXE-bootable from a local server (also running TFTP and DHCP). I just ran 7 machines at a time hooked into a switch and a KVM. The only problem with the whole setup was the Dell GX280's I was wiping only took USB keyboards and I only had a PS/2 KVM, so I had to switch the keyboard (but just to select PXE boot).