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+---- Thread: Wiping information from a computer (/showthread.php?tid=5708502)
Wiping information from a computer - Oh_n0 - Sep 1, 2017
Hey,
I have my old laptop I'd like to use to experiment a bit on it. Of course, it has like 10 years of my life on it, which is something that bothers me. I am not really planning doing something illegal, but at the same time I don't want to "mark" everything I do in some way.
Is there any way to wipe entirely and irreversibly a computer? When I say "computer" I refer both to the hard drive, and to other components inside it (hardware information like serial number? boot partition?) - whatever can store information permanently.
I was thinking in buying a new hard drive (maybe an SSD), but if it is safe to wipe it at home maybe I can save some money instead.
Cheers.
* - Charger - Sep 1, 2017
http://www.diskwipe.org/ will take care of it.
Samsung SSD's have a utility that clears all of the NAND chips.
* - Spiked - Sep 2, 2017
DBAN is a very nice option for doing this.
* - SuckySucky - Sep 3, 2017
(Sep 1, 2017 01:20 PM)Oh_n0 Wrote: Hey,
I have my old laptop I'd like to use to experiment a bit on it. Of course, it has like 10 years of my life on it, which is something that bothers me. I am not really planning doing something illegal, but at the same time I don't want to "mark" everything I do in some way.
Is there any way to wipe entirely and irreversibly a computer? When I say "computer" I refer both to the hard drive, and to other components inside it (hardware information like serial number? boot partition?) - whatever can store information permanently.
I was thinking in buying a new hard drive (maybe an SSD), but if it is safe to wipe it at home maybe I can save some money instead.
Cheers.
You can boot up a live Linux distribution, open up a terminal and run
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda && sync
Writes over the whole disk once which is more than safe for your data to be irrecoverable.
Or DBAN as suggested above.
* - P4scal - Sep 3, 2017
I have used Active KillDisk boot disc before to zero out the drive. You can download the freeware version at killdisk.com
* - imanode - Sep 7, 2017
DBAN should be a good option for what you're needing.
* - zer0day - Sep 8, 2017
I usually use DBAN as others have mentioned. Then after usually drill a few holes through the hard drive. And if your super paranoid you could unscrew and take apart the hard drive and break the platters into a thousand pieces. If it's been 10 years, trash the old drive as I mentioned above, it's definitely time for a new one, and if you get an SSD you will never go back.
* - Oh_n0 - Sep 15, 2017
Thank you so much people, DBAN sounds like what I need.
(Sep 8, 2017 07:16 PM)zer0day Wrote: I usually use DBAN as others have mentioned. Then after usually drill a few holes through the hard drive. And if your super paranoid you could unscrew and take apart the hard drive and break the platters into a thousand pieces. If it's been 10 years, trash the old drive as I mentioned above, it's definitely time for a new one, and if you get an SSD you will never go back.
Drilling holes would be good, but I don't really have so much to hide 🤣 I might get an SSD and use my old HD for other purposes.