Erase Disk Download
Aura Maire
Your built-in startup disk should be the first item listed in the Disk Utility sidebar. It's named Macintosh HD, unless you changed its name. If you don't see it there, choose Apple menu > Shut Down, then unplug all nonessential devices from your Mac and try again.
There's a much simpler solution. By default Disk Utility shows only volumes. Apparently this is a volume and can't be erased due to unsupported partitioning scheme. So, from the View menu choose "Show All Devices" and then you will be able to see the actual USB device that holds this volume and erase it.
Some people claim, this is not enough and one should overwrite hard disks multiple times and with more elaborate patterns (scrub(1) can do both of that as per the other answer), but most will say once is enough, if an attacker wants to restore more than a few bits with a significant chance.
I am trying to install Lubuntu 19.04 on a new Lenovo Ideapad 130S-11IGM, but when I get to the partition page, the option "Erase disk" does not appear. The current OS is Windows 10, which I have no interest in keeping. How can I get the option to erase everything?
Update 2: The problem is solved by taking the only option available (manual partitions) and setting up the partitions according to the instructions at the bottom of the document linked by guiverc in the comments below. Briefly, because this machine has UEFI booting, it is necessary to make a small partition for that boot system in addition to the main partition. Follow these steps: "New partition table" (I chose MBR). Then "Free space"->"Create"-> make a FAT32 partition with EPS flag set, with mount point /boot/efi/. 260 MiB worked for me. Next do "Free space"->"Create"-> make a partition using the remaining available space, with mount point /. Several filesystems are possible, I chose ext4. At this point the "Next" button becomes clickable and everything else is straightforward. ALL DATA WILL BE LOST BY THIS PROCEDURE. Only do this if you want to erase everything.
* 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
Simply deleting files, or even formatting the disk, does nothing to stop a determined snoop. This program, a powerful (and free!) set of tools, promises to do something much more useful. ...... once the program has done its job, there is no turning back.
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.
Always back up your data before wiping a hard drive or making any other significant changes or repairs to your PC. Cloud storage solutions as well as external hard drives are both great ways to keep your data safe in case something goes wrong. You can even clone your hard drive, which will give you a complete copy of your entire disk.
So I have a hard drive that is failing. I want to erase the data on it before sending it for replacement. I'm trying to use dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdXX, but it stops at the first write error. How can I overwrite the drive with zeros, ignoring write errors? conv=noerror seems to only affect the input file.
Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.
Note: With a larger byte size, skipped errors may leave sections of readable data slightly-less than the byte size you choose, but it's still unlikely that anyone would be able to get anything from those sections after the entire disk has been run through the process.
As long as you are using a typical virtual hard disk (and not a physical disk or partition), then what the Linux installer sees inside the virtual machine appears to IT to be a blank hard disk - but on your Windows host is merely a set of files. You aren't going to be erasing any Windows data.
and you simply write() 512 byte chunks to it until you can write no more. Newer disks use 4096 byte sectors instead, but the OS usually treats them as if they have 512 byte sectors, so 512 is the safest value. Here's a C program that does exactly this:
I'm looking for a quick, simple, and effective way to erase the hard drives of computers that my company will be getting rid of (donation to charity, most likely). Ideally, I would like a single-purpose bootable utility CD that upon booting, finds all attached hard drives and performs an "NSA grade" disk erasure.
DBAN:
dban, Darik's "boot and nuke" bootable cd will do this. It takes a while, but that is because it really makes sure everything get erased when you use the longer format options.
Seriously, I don't know any way of getting rid of data faster or easier. There's even a challenge for data recovery companies to restore anything that has been erased with dd. Nobody has been able to do it.
Secure erase has been approved by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), Computer Security Center . In general data erasure techniques when used alone are approved by NIST for lower security sanitization (less than secret) since the data can be recovered at least in theory.
Seconding dban. "NSA" level wipes take 6-8+ hours to fully write to the drive the required number of times. Simply writing over the entire disk once will make it safe from anyone who lacks specialized and costly tooks to manually read the data from the drive.
Software of any kind (malware) can be hidden in the HPA and DCO areas. If you don't wipe these areas too, and the (sophisticated) malware has infected them, chances are that your infection will return after a "full erase" and reinstall of (windows) OS. A forensics guy, might want to see if a criminal has hidden secret data in these areas.
Oh for [goodness] sake, if you want to erase the data securely use autonuke at the command prompt in DBAN. If you want to physically get rid of the thing just throw it into the [friendly] fireplace, or fill up the sink and submerge it in water. Or get a hammer and bash the little nutter to bits. The easiest solution is, of course, the water. But then again you must consider, how highly do you think of yourself to think anyone's after your petty [friendly] data?
If you're planning to sell / gift your old PC or just the drive inside, you need to securely erase your SSD or best hard drive so that the next person can't gain access to your files. You could have sensitive files on the drive, which contain everything from your passwords to your photos to financial information that some could use to steal your identity.
It almost goes without saying, but just deleting a file doesn't make it completely disappear. If you don't securely erase your SSD or hard drive, the operating system just removes a pointer to each deleted file, leaving all the bits in place, until the drive needs that space for new data and overwrites it. But that could take years or, if you have lots of free space, never happen.
After the reset process completed, my personal files were erased as was all the software I had installed. However, after I installed and ran EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free, a utility that finds and undeletes files, I located all my old files. To prove my point, I recovered a file called mypasswords2.txt that had lived in the Documents folder and I was able to read everything inside of it.
No matter how nice a person you sell your computer or your bare drive to, you can't trust that they won't see what deleted files they can recover. Below we'll explain how to securely erase an SSD using Windows and then explain how to do the same to a hard drive as the process is a bit different.
Securely erasing an SSD is different than doing the same process on a mechanical hard drive. The best way to erase an HDD, which we'll cover in more detail below, is to use a program that writes random data over all the sectors several times so that no remnants of the old files remain.
What you need is a utility that can quickly get at all the visible data. Some SSD makers provide secure erase utilities for free and some motherboard BIOSes have "secure erase" capability built in. These tools effectively reset your SSD to a factory state, with even the OP blocks wiped. But your particular drive or motherboard may not have these options available. A paid utility called Parted Magic can do secure wipes for you, but if you don't want to spend money, Windows 10 and 11 have a tool called diskpart which does a good job for free.
If your SSD is the boot drive in the PC you are wiping, the easiest way to securely erase it is through your motherboard's UEFI BIOS. On each brand of motherboard, the secure erase feature may have a different name and a different location in the menu structure.
2. Look for a secure erase option under a tools or storage menu. If you can't find one, consult the user manual. On our Asus ROG motherboard, the option was under Tool->Asus Secure Erase.
Depending on the make and model of your SSD, the manufacturer (ex: Samsung) may have a free utility that will allow you to perform an official "secure erase," resetting the blocks. Note that if the drive you are wiping is the boot drive in the PC you are using to clear it, you will need a utility that can create a bootable USB erasure tool.
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