Hard Drive Eraser

Turndrunch

Hi guys,

anyone know anywhere in dublin that will permanently erase a laptop hard drive for less than 50quid? i can download eraser software online but have no clue how to change settings so that the laptop boots up from the floppy containing the eraser program, how to deal with partitions etc. so it's prob easier to take it somewhere that knows more about it than i do...

thanks.

hearny

Your better off doing it yourself.

Download Dban and burn to disk

http://www.dban.org/download

Instructions for wiping the drive:

http://www.security.ku.edu/download/DBAN_Tutorial.pdf

If you get stuck post any questions here.

You will have more peace of mind doing it yourself anyway as the shop you drop it into might only do a quick job and pocket the cash.

Turndrunch

hi there,

thanks a lot for that reply. i'll give it a go...as i say, i'm confused as to how to boot up from DBAN once i've downloaded but i'll certainly give it a go. appreciate the instructions.

MapForJ

Turndrunch wrote: »

hi there,

thanks a lot for that reply. i'll give it a go...as i say, i'm confused as to how to boot up from DBAN once i've downloaded but i'll certainly give it a go. appreciate the instructions.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bios-boot-cdrom

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/ht/bootcddvd.htm

Alanstrainor

When you turn on your laptop you will be presented with the bios screen. If you have a Dell it'll be a screen that says "Dell" in blue. Other manufacturers will be similar.

When you get this screen, it will only last for a couple of seconds, but it will present you with 2 options.

1. Enter Setup
2. Select boot order. This one is usually F12, but it can be others. Once you hit this you should be able to select the cd-rom/dvd as the boot device which will boot into the DBAN, or what ever software you've burned to disk

EDIT: By the way, there is no way i would pay someone else to do this. You are scrubbing the disk to prevent someone else from accessing your data, giving someone else the disk to do this defeats the purpose.

Oh and most scrubbing software is overkill. If it were me, i would probably just format and be done with it. Unless you work for the CIA or something...

Turndrunch

hi everyone,

thanks a lot for all that info. i'll give it a go meself

Turndrunch

Cleaning job done! (or at least it's in progress and will be for the next 12 hours). Thanks so much for the advice Techies. I really appreciate it.