1. Hard Drive Eraser Download
Carmela Stadtler
Do you know that it is a favorite pastime of people that work in hard drive repair services to recover the content of a formatted drive and dig through it in a search for "interesting" content. A test conducted by PC World shows how easy is to recover the information from a formatted drive. A number of free utilities for data recovery is available, as well as some very powerful commercial solutions like data recovery software from Disk Doctors. Today, just about anybody can recover all data from a drive that is formatted and dumped into garbage. The main danger lies when a company wants to get rid of old hard drives - formatting a hard drive and trashing it is an open invitation for security troubles. Every day tens of thousands of hard drives stops working. Sometimes it starts with accumulating bad sectors which is a sure sign hard drive is near the end of its life, and sometimes hard drive clicking point to a serious mechanical error. Either way, users or companies that try to fix their drives by sending them to a service or just trashing them are at a risk. Secure hard drive erasing is the only way to have piece of mind and assure that a personal data is irretrievably gone.
Secure hard drive erasing is a method where a series of random binary data has been written into the hard drive, making it nearly impossible to recover such erased information. This method is slower than simple formatting but assures that information's on your hard drive will not be exposed. Hard Drive Eraser is powerful free software that will erase your hard drive in a way that prevents any future possibility of data recovery. Hard Drive Eraser is released under GNU General Public License and it is free for personal and commercial usage. You can download Hard Drive Eraser here.
Hard Drive Eraser will work on any computer with Windows Vista or Windows XP Operating System. Hard Drive Eraser uses an advanced and secure algorithms to erase drive volumes and partitions. The speed of erasing is dependant of the speed of your system, particularly hard drive. To download Hard Drive Eraser check the download page with the latest version.
The usage of Hard Drive Eraser is very simple. You pick a drive you want to erase, choose a shredding scheme (an algorithm used for shredding) and file system, and press "Start" to execute drive erasing. You can only erase a hard drive, or partition which is not used as a system partition from within the program is running. To further explain, if you have a C: as you system disk or partition you can only erase D, E, F etc. partitions. If you want to erase C partition, the one where operating system reside, you would have to access it from the other instance of operating system from other partition, or preferably take out the drive from the computer, connect it to another computer and erase it from there. One hard drive can have more than one partition, and if you want to erase the whole hard drive you should erase all its partitions. To learn more about disk partitioning check the wikipedia article here.
Ideally, if you want to get rid of old drives in your company you can have one computer which serves for partitioning other drives, than plugging old drives you want to erase onto it (by using hdd rack, usb case rack or so). This way only one instance of Hard Drive Eraser will be installed.
You use Hard Drive Eraser at your own responsibility. The author of this program can not be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any loss or damage caused by the usage of this program. If you prefer the professional support and safety choose a commercial product such as one of the excellent tools from Cyber Scrub (cyberCide disk eraser direct donwload here) Users concerned about privacy of their daily collected data should also check Privacy Eraser. If you want to recover a data lost after hard drive crash or after formatting check software collections of file recovery products from Disk Doctors or Pro Data Doctor, both are awesome suite of products for all possible purposes.
* Number of licenses corresponds to the number of disks you can erase in parallel:
- Freeware license can erase 2 drives concurrently on one machine
- 1 user license can erase 2 drives concurrently on one machine
- 2 user licenses can erase 2 drives concurrently on 2 machines
- 3 user licenses can erase 3 drives concurrently on 3 machines
- # user licenses can erase # drives concurrently on # machines
- Site and Enterprise licenses: unlimited concurrent erasures and installations
Active@ KillDisk gives you a fast, easy way to delete your files and folders for good if you're getting rid of your hard drive. While it's not as advanced as some other permanent deletion programs, it offers enough bonus features to keep you interested. The professional, welcoming look earns it a few extra points.
We have been using this to satisfy data wiping requirements at the university before disposing of old equipment. It is very simple to use so we are able to have workstudies wiping the drives. It does take several hours on a 3 pass wipe, but I don't think anything can be done about the time due to the nature of what the software has to do. It would be nice if there were audible or more obvious visual prompts that a wipe has completed, so the workstudy can see at a glance without looking at the small status window.
If you have ever found yourself in the situation where you want to delete multiple drives, whether it is because of some confidential data that you want to get rid of or maybe some nasty virus has plagued your drives and you have no ways of removing it, then Active@ KillDisk might be the best solution for you. Active@ KillDisk is a data security application that permanently deletes any data on physical disk drives without any chance of recovering it.
Hard Drive Eraser also works with any removable drive you connect to the PC, which makes it especially handy when it comes to erasing USB memory sticks before lending them to someone else. You should note also that partitions are listed as separate drives, so make sure you double check that you have selected the right one.
It may seem a silly piece of advice, but remember to make sure you want to delete those files before actually using Hard Drive Eraser on any drive. The program does ask you twice for confirmation, just in case.
Unlike hard-drive docking stations or adapters that require a computer connection and software to erase drives, this hard drive sanitizer features standalone erasing that doesn't require a host computer. This avoids the hassle of connecting your drives to a host computer and protects your drives from external security threats like remote data access.
The four-bay design maximizes efficiency by batching multiple drives in single erase projects, saving you valuable time. The hard drive eraser supports USB 3.0, also known as USB 3.1 Gen 1, with file transfer rates of up to 5Gbps.
Using industry-recognized erase modes, the hard drive eraser securely sanitizes the data from your 2.5 in. or 3.5 in. SSDs or HDDs. It supports nine erase modes including Quick Erase, Single and Multi-pass Overwrites, Custom Erase, NIST 800-88 Rev. 1 Purge compliant Secure Erase and Enhanced Secure Erase. The Multi-pass Overwrite (3-Pass Full Disk Overwrite) erase procedures meet the requirements of DoD (5220.22-M) standards.
Support for a variety of erase modes makes this drive eraser perfect for virtually any professional application. Single-Pass Overwrite is ideal for IT technicians and system administrators who decommission and repurpose old hard drives, while Quick and Secure Erase, Single Pass Overwrite and Multi-pass Overwrite modes (meeting DoD standards) are ideal solutions for research laboratories, health offices, law offices and accountants who manage sensitive data and require secure erasing to avoid potential privacy breaches.
In addition to supporting 2.5 in./3.5 in. SATA SSDs and HDDs, the hard drive eraser also works with 2.5 in. and 3.5 in. IDE hard drives, mSATA drives and SATA M.2 drives using a compatible StarTech.com adapter:
The hard drive eraser features convenient menu navigation that ensures fast and efficient performance, with push-button operation and a built-in LCD display that clearly identifies the erase modes and task status. You can also connect the eraser to a computer to quickly access the drive that's connected to port-1.
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