This is particuarly directed towards my geek readers, but any non-geeks with connections can take a stab at it as well.
I've sort of promised that I'd look into getting an assload of donated (working) laptop computers for an Elementary School the agency I work with has programs going in.
Now, I don't want your laptop specifically, but I want to know if I get a bunch of oh-so-magnanimous people to donate their laptops (that they were going to dispose of anyway), there will be far less problems with getting them to part with them if we have a means in place to strip their hard drives of sensitive information.
I know that the only real way to erase that information permanently is to set a fire to your hard drive, but that's not practical in this instance. Is there software available that anyone can recommend we use that will at least give people some peace of mind?
Posted by Tiffany at August 13, 2006 01:42 PM | TrackBackYou can use Darik's Boot and Nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ or Eraser http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/ I have never used them, but they should do the job.
Posted by: mace at August 13, 2006 07:27 PMUsed to be, in the Military, running a routine that would write 1's to every bit of a disk, followed by writing 0's to every bit (repeat 20 times) was considered good enough to declassify the drive.
Posted by: Ted at August 14, 2006 03:54 PMthere are a few here you might look into:
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?tg=dl-2001&qt=drive%20wipe&tag=srch