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Securely erase data

Discussion in 'General Software' started by Tony D, Apr 28, 2015.

  1. Tony D

    Tony D Administrator Administrator

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    I've been using Eraser to clean personal data off of hard drives. I'm having problems with it today. Keeps coming back stating that the erase operation has completed with errors.

    I tried to download on fresh and newer version today, but http://eraser.heidi.ie/ isn't responding.

    What you others here using to securely erase user data?
     
  2. allheart55 (Cindy E)

    allheart55 (Cindy E) Administrator Administrator

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  3. Tony D

    Tony D Administrator Administrator

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    Thanks Cindy. The site must have been down temporarily. It's loading fine for me now.

    I'm going to try DBAN anyway. I've had problems with Eraser in the past. Notably, if I don't erase an entire drive, I'm still able to recover file names using NTFS Recovery. No actual files, just names. The drive I'm working with has a recovery partition. I'd like to keep that intact. So, I'm just deleting the Windows/User partition.
     
  4. Tony D

    Tony D Administrator Administrator

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    Interesting thing - Chrome didn't want me to download Eraser.

    It stated
    Even afer I dismissed the message, the download didn't complete properly. It showed as an unconfirmed file.
     
  5. Tony D

    Tony D Administrator Administrator

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    Looks like DBAN creates a bootable disk that will wipe entire drives. Nice, but not quite what I'm looking for. Looking for something that will allow me to securely wipe individual partitions. I'll keep this on hand for situations where I want to wipe entire drives. Could of used it a few years ago when I was wiping a bunch of computers for a company.
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2015
  6. Rich M

    Rich M Guest

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    Tony,
    Why not just delete the partition? I never use any of those things even to wipe a drive unless I want to take it all the way back then I use "Kill Disk" (cuz I love the name) if I am worrying about old files on there, but I seldom do. Maybe I don't think, anything I have is worth stealing off the drive and I don't flatter myself that way?:nyahh:
     
  7. Tony D

    Tony D Administrator Administrator

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    It's for a customer. They want their data securely deleted.
     

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