Secure Erase Your Harddrive for Free

With the ever changing technology and computers creating a high turnover rate on computers we own we have to worry about the data that was stored on the machine you are replacing. Here are some instructions on how to securly erase your harddrive so you can have some peace of mind knowing your data is no longer accessible/recoverable. Now truthfully it can always be recovered but would take months and months of time and 99% of the populations wouldn't want to waste there time. The only way to ensure no one gets your data is to do a high pass secure erase and then destroy your harddrive with a hammer and make sure there are alot of pieces of the actual drive. Believe it or not if the drive isn't in tiny pieces it is possible to put the drive together and recover data.

Here is instructions on how to do a secure erase.

First download the Ultimate Boot CD which is free (i personally prefer to download the .iso and then burn that to a CD using one of the many default CD burning programs you have on your machine).

Insert the Ultimate Boot CD into your drive and turn your computer on. (Note: these instructions are based of version 4.11 of the Ultimate Boot CD)

First screen you will be presented with is similar to the own shown here. Just press Enter to get to the menu. Please note if you wait to long it may try to boot to the menu on its own and it doesn't always work and requires you to reboot your machine again to get to this menu.

Since you pressed enter at the screen shown above, you should now be displayed a screen like the own shown below. Go ahead and use your arrow keys to move down to the menu option "Hard Disk Tools" and press enter.

You should now have a screen that looks like the one shown below which is the menu of Hard Disk Tools. Use your arrow keys to move down to the menu option "Wiping Tools" and press enter.

Once pressing enter, you should have a screen like the one shown below which lists all the Hard disk wiping tools. One of the easiest and my preferred is the HDDErase v3.1. So if you follow my preference then use your arrow keys on your keyboard to move down to the menu option HDDErase v3.1 as shown below and press enter.

Now things are going to move pretty fast because this selection has the majority of the menu's on an autotimer but don't worry, the program will prompt you at the end before it does anything. Since you pressed enter at the previous screen you should of seen several screens be displayed including these...

If you want a HIGH secure erase you have to move fast and move down to number 6 when you see this menu. It defaults to #1 selection after a few seconds and begins running through some options.

Again, you have just a few seconds to read this, but typically I just let it go and let the program work its magic.

This is your last chance to stop the secure erase. Once you type "Y" and press enter, your data will start getting erased. Please note, the higher the secure erase you choose above the longer the secure erase will take.

Hopefully this was helpful and is meant as a guide to be helpful and in noway do we take responsibility for the actions of these tools.