How to permanently delete data from Hard disk drive?

[StacySmith]

I want to wipe out old and confidential data which is stored in my Seagate Hard disk.
There are several software available online but I am unable to decide which is most secure.
Kindly suggest a good alternative here.

[Ganado]

This is a programming forum, not tech support, so you can probably get better quality answers somewhere else.

That being said, I heard BleachBit is effective. It's what Hillary used.

Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications,

Note: If a part of your hard drive is no longer writable due to having a bad sector or something, a program might not be able to erase it (it won't even detect it at all). If you have top secret information, often hard disks are physically destroyed.
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-completely-erase-a-hard-drive-2626173

[mbozzi]

I've always used Darik's Boot and Nuke. But this is only suitable for actual hard disks!
If DBAN fails due to bad sectors, you need to have the disk physically destroyed. But it's supposed to report those errors.

Solid state drives, on the other hand, must be physically destroyed. SSD hardware abstracts wear-leveling and things so it's not always possible to write every block. ATA specifies a "secure-erase" command which is supposed to avoid the problem, but support for it is (was?) spotty.

[Ganado]

If DBAN fails due to bad sectors, you need to have the disk physically destroyed. But it's supposed to report those errors.

Oh, I wasn't aware. But now that I think about it, some logic has to know whether or not a sector is good or bad, else you wouldn't know if you were writing successfully or not. I'm not sure where I heard that it can be impossible to detect whether a sector is bad.

Also didn't know that about SSDs, so thanks.

But so... when in doubt, physically destroy :)

[helios]

You can detect bad sectors because the drive takes too long to read them, or it returns bad data (you need checksumming to detect bad data). Drives designed to work in arrays have a timeout so that the software can handle the failure (for example by using parity data) in a timely manner. Consumer drives on the other hand, which will rarely be used in an array, have an infinite timeout, to ensure that the data can be read if it's at all possible. Most people notice that a hard drive has failed when they try to access a file or directory and the whole system grinds to a halt, waiting for the sector.

If you have sensitive data, it's easiest to just never write it directly to the device. Use an encrypted container, and then throw away the decryption key when its time to dispose of the drive.

Otherwise you should use one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o

[lslizzysmith]

Hey,

BitRaser is one good alternative.

This software ensures permanent deletion of files which cannot be recovered in any possible scenario. It uses 17 different algorithms to overwrite the hard drives which makes the data irrecoverable.

Hope this answers your question.

[lslizzysmith]

Hey,

BitRaser for File is one good alternative.

This software ensures permanent deletion of files which cannot be recovered in any possible scenario. It used 17 different algorithms to overwrite hard drives which ensures that the data is irrecoverable.

Hope this answers your question.

[helios]

Damn spammers.

[dhayden]

Overwriting the data once makes it unrecoverable without specialized hardware. It's unlikely that the NSA will go to the effort to recover my pirated music or financial files. And considering that it takes a long time to overwrite a modern disk, I'm happy with doing it once.

So I have two simple programs. One overwrites a file with random bits. The other overwrites the free space by simply creating large files and writing random data to them until it can't create/write any more. Then it deletes the files.

Unless you're a foreign spy or Pablo Escobar, something like this should be enough. You're data just isn't that important.

[Computergeek01]

There are data destruction firms that will throw you drive in a hopper with a hundred others and put them through a physical grinder. The bank data and confidential company data in those hoppers is worth more than anything you might be trying to hide.