I'm giving an old Dell computer back to a friend who lent it me, who is likely going to sell it. Was just wondering how to completely wipe the harddrive so that any future owner cannot recover any card details and such. Read about DBAN and was wondering whether this was any good, and will it render the drive useless afterwards? Because I need the drive to still be in working condition. Anyone offer any advice? Thanks.
It works as you said, just one thing about Dells is they have a special partition that makes them really not fun. I can't remember if it will work to the hardware or detect partitions. In any case if the Dellness is not important you've got no worries, if it is it would be ok to pop it in as there are some menus to go through if you don't hit auto at the beginning. N.B. this is from memory from some time ago, any and all information might be as accurate as a dog wielding a shotgun!
DBAN will wipe all data on the HDD - so it will leave no partitions, 'deleted' files, sensitive passwords etc. The drive alignment data and other important bits are left alone though, as DBAN can only access parts of the hard drive that any other software can, which is the data section.
it takes a reasonable time to go through, but trust me it is 99.9% impossible to get any data off afterwoulds
To be honest, DBAN can be a bit of overkill, but is practically impossible to beat. The drive will be wiped, and the data lost - period. It still works afterwards, so don't worry!
