Hard Drive Wiping

[Blaze]

So I have a hard drive in an old computer I'd like to put into this one and use as a dedicated storage for my recordings.
However it's...unclean... I had the computer for a long time, it was a hand-me-down from my dad who got it from work.
Then my mother had it who made it worse, and it's just in a bad mess. When I had it all it could do was run YouTube, and it could barely do that.
No telling what state it's in now...

Anyhow, the question.
How could I completely wipe the hard drive without hooking it up to a computer?
I don't have anything on there I need or even want to salvage, I don't even want to know what might dwell on it, I just want it wiped so I can use it to record to.

I have a little over 500 GB on the drive on this computer, but I also just deleted a lot of useless stuff from it not too long ago.
It'd just be nice to have a dedicated drive for my recordings, which prior to compression are very large.

[Flabort]

My most reliable source for technical computer stuff tells me that, if you want to use the hard drive after you wipe it, then no, there is no way of wiping it without hooking it up to the computer.

I assume the reason for not wanting to hook it up is that part of the mess is a slew of viruses, right? Best to hook it up to a garbage computer and format it from there, I think. However, my source did NOT tell me that part, so it might be wrong.

[Blaze]

I assume the reason for not wanting to hook it up is that part of the mess is a slew of viruses, right? Best to hook it up to a garbage computer and format it from there, I think. However, my source did NOT tell me that part, so it might be wrong.

I have no clue what shape the thing is in, and have no desire to find out.
And I'd hook it up to a junk computer but I currently have no junk computer to do so.

I could have used the computer that it's in, but I practiced taking a computer apart on it.
In my curiosity I took the CPU out, and probably bent the prongs on it or some how broke it.

Not to mention when I had it, it would take ages to boot up, there is no telling how long it'd take now, saying it still worked.

[Grauniad]

Here is the safest way to do it.

In your current PC, make a "live CD" of a Linux distro, such as Linux Mint. Now disconnect your existing, good harddrives by pulling their SATA cables at the back of the drives.

Install the "bad" harddrive in a spare bay.

Boot from the live CD and run DBAN on the Bad drive.

Reconnect your good drives and use Windows Disk Management to format and add the drive you DBAN'ned into Windows.

Run a utility like Crystal Disk Info to get the SMART data for your drives and check if  the "bad" drive throws SMART errors.

[Blaze]

Here is the safest way to do it.

In your current PC, make a "live CD" of a Linux distro, such as Linux Mint. Now disconnect your existing, good harddrives by pulling their SATA cables at the back of the drives.

Install the "bad" harddrive in a spare bay.

Boot from the live CD and run DBAN on the Bad drive.

Reconnect your good drives and use Windows Disk Management to format and add the drive you DBAN'ned into Windows.

Run a utility like Crystal Disk Info to get the SMART data for your drives and check if  the "bad" drive throws SMART errors.

That sounds complicated and like it'd take awhile. I'll have to do it on a day when I'm too busy to use my computer.
I was also just reminded I don't even have another SATA cable that is long enough for the Hard Drive...

I'll look into getting another when I get a USB to make an OS backup.

[Grauniad]

You can simply switch the current SATA cable. That ensures you wont have the hard drives connected at the same time. Thus no MBR cross-infection.

[Blaze]

You can simply switch the current SATA cable. That ensures you wont have the hard drives connected at the same time. Thus no MBR cross-infection.

Yeah, but I'd do all the work and still not be able to use it. :D
I also still have yet to hook my Disc drive up, haven't had a use for it yet.

[Kingo]

Take a magnet and drag it across the hard drive.

[Blaze]

Take a magnet and drag it across the hard drive.

Wouldn't that make it useless though?

[Grayzzur]

Useless? No. Might not even do as much damage as you think, newer drives I think have a little shielding from the likes of refrigerator magnets. You might need a really strong magnet, or even an electro-magnet. Wiping (or erasing with a magnet) will likely leave it un-partitioned though, and you'll have to re-partition the drive before formatting.

[Grauniad]

degaussing a hard drive is a destructive process that cannot be reversed. But as has been pointed out, waving a magnet near a hard drive is nowhere near enough to cause degaussing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degaussing#Irreversible_damage_to_some_media_types

[Grayzzur]

Ahh. The old pre-ATA/IDE drives and low-level formatting. Where you could choose the sector interleave patterns. Good times, good times.

So, yeah, modern drives... magnet probably bad. I like to boot up a linux boot CD or USB stick and run the 'dd' command to zero the drive myself, if I think viruses have infested it beyond a regular formatting. Wipes the partition table out. If you're not comfortable with linux and it's commands, the DBAN method mentioned above is probably easier and more thorough. Either way, unplug the good drives from your computer to avoid an "oops" with your good data.

[Blaze]

Ahh. The old pre-ATA/IDE drives and low-level formatting. Where you could choose the sector interleave patterns. Good times, good times.

So, yeah, modern drives... magnet probably bad. I like to boot up a linux boot CD or USB stick and run the 'dd' command to zero the drive myself, if I think viruses have infested it beyond a regular formatting. Wipes the partition table out. If you're not comfortable with linux and it's commands, the DBAN method mentioned above is probably easier and more thorough. Either way, unplug the good drives from your computer to avoid an "oops" with your good data.

Yeah, I'll end up getting it into a usable state when I have less free time to let it run the course.
Right now I'm using my computer too much so I won't have anything to do while waiting on it. :D

I am curious if anyone has an estimation on how long it'd take, it's only a 500 GB drive.

[Grayzzur]

Depends on the speed of the drive. Older drives are slower. Newer drives are faster.

DBAN is designed to do a secure data wipe to ensure data cannot be recovered from the drive. If you can adjust the settings to just zero the drive, that would serve your purposes and be a lot faster than the multiple patterns it will try to write by default (usually something like 7 passes).

It's also possible that just letting it run for a couple minutes and cancelling the wipe will be enough to render the data on the drive unreadable and require a re-format, which may be all you need. Partition tables and directory structures tend to be up front, and once they're gone, the computer doesn't know how to get to anything that may be left on the drive (unless you get into data recovery software).

Now, if the drive has sensitive data on it that you want to securely erase, let DBAN run it's course with default or better settings.

[Blaze]

Depends on the speed of the drive. Older drives are slower. Newer drives are faster.

DBAN is designed to do a secure data wipe to ensure data cannot be recovered from the drive. If you can adjust the settings to just zero the drive, that would serve your purposes and be a lot faster than the multiple patterns it will try to write by default (usually something like 7 passes).

It's also possible that just letting it run for a couple minutes and cancelling the wipe will be enough to render the data on the drive unreadable and require a re-format, which may be all you need. Partition tables and directory structures tend to be up front, and once they're gone, the computer doesn't know how to get to anything that may be left on the drive (unless you get into data recovery software).

Now, if the drive has sensitive data on it that you want to securely erase, let DBAN run it's course with default or better settings.

Not anything on there important, however I don't want to risk anything, so I'll probably let it run it's course on default settings.
I've yet to be able to do an OS backup on this drive so if it gets screwed, I'm screwed. Trying to get my hands on a USB large enough for a backup.