Wiping hard drives

With near-commodity hardware, computers are coming and going at a faster rate than ever. For around $300-$400, a new machine can be bought from Dell.

These aren't high end machines but they meet the needs of everyday users. They run office applications, accounting software, email clients, and web browsers with ease.

The machines are also priced and built to become almost disposable in the eyes of the user. What happens to those machines when they are recycled? They go to neighbors, relatives, schools, churches, and other needy groups or they go to the dump.

While recycling and donating older and used computers is a great idea, there is one thing that people forget or do not realize: their data is still on the hard drive and available to anyone who can access the computer!

How does a person avoid leaving all of that personal or business information on the computer's hard drive? Wiping the hard drive with a disk wiping utility.

By wiping the hard drive, a person can remove all traces of your personal information stored on the computer. Wiping, or overwriting your hard drive, enables a person to remove:

• personal information
• business information
• incriminating information? (for all of the bad guys out there)

The topic of favorite drive wiping utilities came up in the #snort-gui IRC channel and I mentioned that I like to use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke). Richard Bejtlich has a nice writeup (as a result of that conversation) at his TaoSecurity Blog and provides some screen shots of DBAN in action.

Remember, only wipe your hard drive when you are ready to completely say goodbye to the data on the drive. If there is some information you would like to keep, do not forget to back it up! Happy Wiping!