How To Erase Hard Drive

How To Erase Hard Drive Without Leaving Any Traceable Data?

Sometimes you may have to do the tedious task of erasing data from your hard drive, such as when you've decided to sell your PC or laptop. It'll be very helpful if you know how to erase hard drive on your own.

It is also good to have a clear out once in a while and erase those data you will no longer require so that you can free up PC space and improve its performance. If you're selling your PC or laptop, you certainly will not want any of your data or personal information to be traceable.

Erasing Data Completely

The answer to how to erase hard drive completely and safely is to overwrite the data you are erasing, making this eventually untraceable. First you need to understand that when data is stored on your hard drive, the space it is on can never be taken back to its original blank status. This is exactly how the experts can recover it. So when erasing the hard drive, you will want to put something else in place of this data. The more you do this the more secure your erased data is going to be.

The Gutmann method teaches you how to erase hard drive and to overwrite it 35 times using different carefully selected patterns to disguise the trail to the original data. Doing this will work but it is very time consuming, especially if you are erasing large amounts of data at a time. Some government agencies adapted a similar method on how to erase data; they however overwrite the data around 7 times, again using different complex patterns.

How To Erase Hard Drive With Software Tools

It will take longer but secure hard drive erasing will make it almost impossible for the data to be salvaged. Secure erasing uses a system of binary data to replace what you are erasing.

Hard Drive Eraser is a great free tool that you can download to help you do this. It is available to be downloaded free for personal or commercial usage under the General Public License. It works on Windows and uses an advanced method to erase partitions and different drive individually. This is great if you want to erase a particular drive at a time. If you are downloading it for commercial use it is easy to delete drives used by multiple users.

Dariks Boot and Nuke, also known as DBAN, is another tool that will show you how to erase hard drive safely. It's great if you have to remove the contents of your hard drive quickly or if you want to erase bulk loads of data at a time. It is a boot disk that when run will delete and wipe out any hard drive it detects.

Now that you know how to erase hard drive, next you will want to think carefully before you use any of the tools or methods. It is important to remember that you will be using it at your own responsibility as it will erase data quickly.