Hard Drive Eraser

Can anyone recommend a good inexpensive drive eraser? I want to try to resell them as refurbished on ebay. Just not a fan of breaking them down for the little return. TIA

Pop a sata or an IDE with power out the side of your desktop and plug it in. You may have to move the jumpers on the hard drive you want to clean to "slave". Your computer should recognize the new drive. Use disc management to format the drive.

So is this more complicated then its worth? Any suggestions on what I should do with all hard drives to get the most money out of them?

I second the DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) program. It's free and does more than just formatting and less when you wipe out the HDDs completely making them unusable. For a better result run DBAN multiple times (2-3 at minimum).

I use Hard Drive Sentinel Pro. It both does secure, insurable wipes and, just as importantly, tests them for failures, bad sectors and estimates the remaining drive life.

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Also. Little known bit of information. If your reselling drives I would advise that you have information insurance. Not cheap but if you sell a drive and someone gets personal info off of it. I bet you can guess who you they will be coming after.

Yes!

When I erase hard drives...I like to say this...



Don't judge me. You know your going to start doing it to now.

Sirscrapalot - sometimes I like to put pins in an eraser then hand them out to people working on essays, important paperwork, etc. - Someone not me.

Originally Posted by JJinLV

I use Hard Drive Sentinel Pro. It both does secure, insurable wipes and, just as importantly, tests them for failures, bad sectors and estimates the remaining drive life.

strictly agree and the Pro Hard Drive Sentinel is better than free tools

There are some free tools and they are good such as Eraser, CCleaner, File Shredder and others. But I recommend using the HDShredder Pro. This ideal hard drive eraser software is ideal for use on popular Windows OS such as Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and Server 2003 – 2012. Besides, you can boot it by using an ISO file or like a normal application on your Windows PC.

Great Feature:
Walkthrough wizard for permanently deleting files
It can erase date from both internal and external hard drives
Ability to delete files from Windows OS
Small download size (11.5MB)

Ok you guys got your point across and scared me enough into scrapping these out unless you know someone with references to buy them. I'm just tying to make money not get locked up.

Send them off for easy profit with little investment only if you are satisfied that your customer data is secure. Not to infringe on the buyers here, but nothing leaves my warehouse without first being wiped, degaussed or shredded. My customer decides which method they want, which can be painful when I'm dropping 4TB drives in the shredder. But customer satisfaction is my key to success. If you were able to wipe drives, my method is this:

I first test using a Wiebetech Drive Erazer ($200). Anything with bad sectors or poor disk health goes into the shredder. I then throw them in a docking station ($15) and do a second test using HDD Guardian. You can also use Seagate tools. Again, anything with bad sectors or poor health gets tossed in the shredder. Finally I use an Aleratec 1:11 Copy Cruiser, which copies but also does DOD and Secure Erase wiping. This machine comes in different sizes and prices and is not cheap $500+. Find a used one if possible. Once the process is complete you can put the drive back in the docking station and confirm that it is wiped. I guarantee my method for my buyers with a warranty and have yet to have one return. I wipe about 500-1k drives a month and shred about twice that. The Wiebetech can also wipe the drives to different standards. Hope this helps