Re: (OT) Multiple hard drive wipe utilities question...

I believe it's free for personal use.


Ben Myers wrote:
At a cost of $25, if HDDerase does the job as advertised, it is a relative
bargain. I've downloaded it, and I'll try it. If I like it and use it
regularly on IDE and SATA drives, I'll pay the $25 willingly.

SCSI, in all its shades and gradations, remains uncovered by HDDerase, so I'll
have to continue with DBAN.

Nice that these folks have done free or low-cost implementations of software for
which the blissfully ignorant pay big bucks... Ben Myers

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:01:21 -0700, "paulmd@xxxxxxx" <paulmd@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 19, 5:38 pm, "S.Lewis" <stew1...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
<pau...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1184882342.322665.250400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On Jul 19, 7:11 am, Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOS...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually, there is a better way to do this that is fully DOD approved.
For the past several years, almost all IDE hard drives have had an
INTERNAL TO THE DRIVE "wipe the entire drive" command. This wipe is
EXTREMELY secure, and isn't done by the computer that the drive is
connected to, but rather by the drive itself (once the command is
issued).
A professor (Gordon Hughes) at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) has
produced a PC program (command line (DOS), I think) that will do such an
erase on a PC, it's called HDDerase and a web search should find it.
There have been a couple of articles on C|Net or Infoworld about this
feature also. The feature has been around for a surprisingly long time,
virtually all IDE and SATA drives have it, but the PC community is
surprisingly ignorant of it.
Yes, most IDE/SATA drives above 15GB or so have it built in. But when
you have to do bulk wiping, especially on older drives, you never know
for sure if it's implemented. And then there is the SCSI issue.
The SCSI issue seems to be the deal breaker, though some external devices
claim to be able to handle all three.

But.....$$$$$$
HDDerase requires a commercial license for non-home use.

http://invent.ucsd.edu/technology/cases/2005/SD2005-815.htm

DBAN is FREE. It works just fine with internal and external SCSI (yes,
and SCA, and fiber channel). USB and 1394 seem to be out. And no zip/
jaz/orb/sparq wiping. For now.


.

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