Upgrading Hard Drive

I am thinking of upgrading my hard drive and was wondering if there are any recommended decent free programs for thoroughly erasing my old one which I plan to give away to a friend. I am aware that a simple format is not much good these days with regards to identity theft and so on.

I would like to add that I have only ever spoken to the said friend via email which is why I want to be sure that my bank details and so on are properly removed.

In this day and age most people shred their documents before they despose of them so I`m guessing the same should be done with personal details on a hard drive.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Jason.

Don't have to give it out, just plug it as spare disk...

Buit he has already said he wants to give it to a friend so thats not the choice he wants to take.

As for recomendations I have none but do a google for a deep delete program and you should find some thin that meats your needs.

[Edit]
http://forums.phoenixlabs.org/t10745-where-can-i-get-deep-delete.html

[Edit 2}
I haven't tested it my self so I can give no garuntee to it.
Try that one.

[edit 3]
Apparently http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/ is very good better than my above recomendation. So thats most likely your best bet, once again I havn't tried it so I give no garuntee.

First of all, I doubt a friend is going to be commiting identity theft, and secondly, I doubt he's willing to invest 20.000 USD for data recovery services even if he was.

I know but what if he passes it on at a later date? Just want to make sure.

Jason.

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

Will this work?

dump a big garbage file onto it and make enough copies to fill the HDD

You seem pretty desperate to hide something, QuickSilva...

Ha, if I was do you think that I`d post on the internet for the world to see? Surely it`s quite common for people selling\giving away their old drives to want it clean before they pass it on? Especially in this day and age.

Jason.

Has to be DBaN : http://dban.sourceforge.net/

If it's good enough for Federal Agencies, I think it should be good enough for you ;)

Tracks Eraser Pro .. will erase files or empty space so nothing can be recovered, been using it for years

http://www.acesoft.net/

Get a win 98 start disc
Run Fdisk, delete the partion information and Drive information
Restart (From Floppy or cd)
Run Fdisk
Recreate Drive system, re create Partion system (Restart and Fromat as requseted)

H&K: That solves absolutely nothing. all it does is essentially destroy your file allocation tables, but all the actual data is still there - so any disk viewing utility will be able to show you to contents of all your files regardless.

It may look like the drive is empty at the first glance, but anyone who knows what to look for will be able to recover a lot of information regardless.

No its not, because it does a low format.

If all it did was destroy then recrate the hash table, it wouldnt take hours, which it does

Formatting doesn't get rid of the data. Even an FDISK multiple times doesn't do this.

You have to ovewright the data with other data in order to make it inaccessible. That's why these utilities and tools you can download have multiple writing methods to ensure that the data once overwritten 3-4 times is gone forever.

Thats just a myth. It does detroy the data. (If you are asking for the data to be detroyed to the point that Data and Jordi couldnt get it of the had drive then burn the thing).

But a Fdisk repartion and format detroys it just as much as any of these utilities.

It really doesn't. Not even close. Yes it destroys the data on a superficial level, but it's mostly still there if you have the technology to find it.

There is a reason that federal agencies use tools like DBaN.

But but only if you had the same technology that they use to pickup tapes that have been taped over. To some level you cannot get rid of the information if the drive sat in that state for a long time. (Ie the file never moved)

Utilities like DBaN are honetly just cons, a full fdish run, (Or two if you are worried), put the informations well past the ability of most tech to retrive the information. Anyone who can retrive it at that point, is doing so via tech that can retreive it anyway what ever you have written over it with.

Its like the final key on a saftydeposit box, once you can blow the safe door off, its pointless.

EDIT: But Ha, if I had information I wanted to pretect, I dont Think Id take the chance
Also, now I think about it, Ive still got every drive Ive ever owned. Includeing a 64Meg 2 1/2 inch amega one (I just buy replacments for any Comps I sell on), so I suppose I dont trust it either

LOL! DBaN is free! What kind of crappy con artist writes a program you don't need and gives it away for free? And the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration is apparently easier to con than you are?

Earlier you described the format command as doing a low format, which it doesn't. A Low Level format is something different.

And I'm sorry but anyone who has the technology to get it back after a couple of formats with the dos format command does not automatically have the ability to get it back after you've done a 7-pass DBaN wipe on it.

I'm not denying that it's expensive and/or difficult to recover this information. I'm not saying that your average Joe T. User is going to be able to do it, but DBaN is free, easy and it gives you peace of mind. I fail to see any "con" in that, particularly since the original poster ( whose satisfaction we are trying to arrange here ) did say that he wanted that level of complete peace of mind. What's he lose? No money. A bit of time ( not much, he only has to be there to start it off each time. ) Nothing else.

why not just write to zeros, i doubt most people even know about these recovery programs

Its a con the same way eating carrots for good eyesight is a con. Or the same way smoking Bannana Skins is a con.

BUt anyway. As I implied in my edit, Ive changed my Mind, I never give anyone one of my old hard drives, and so Im not the one to complian about you being careful.

what you scaread about?? Keeping some drawing for time traveling machine?? :)) Just joking..maybe you can put your HD on to 200Watts speakers and enjoy music a bit, then give it to your friend :))

H&K the method you describe is not a secure erase at all.

When you format a hard drive (using the methods you describe) it does not overwrite all the data. A format checks drive integrity (hence the time it takes) and then overwrites the headers. The headers are gone but the data contained still exists.

You need to write to every single bit on the drive to really overwrite the data. Usually many many times over. In practice writing over the entire drive once will stop 99.9% of average joe's getting back any previous data.

Years ago I 'formatted' a floppy. It took a minute and a half, and only near the very end where it writes the FAT table it complained that the disk was write-protected, and it hadn't actually done anything at all.

It doesn't sound like he's a very trustworthy friend is you're paranoid of him seeing possible remains of your harddisk.
It sounds like you've got something really disturbing stored on your harddrive that you don't want anyone to know about.

Come on, what is it you're hiding? :)

Yup, that about sums it up on how formating (standard windows / dos one) does not erase as it goes along.

Further proven by the existence of various 'unformat' utilities that could recover any freshly formatted floppy.