Then when you want to destroy it, just snap the disk in half and throw the halves in different garbage cans. If you just want to hide it from your average joe techie, zeroing the drive 5+ times and using a secure erase program, will deffinately do the trick.Īgain, I recommend keeping all your truly sensitive data 2048+ bit encrypted with a strong algorythm, and keeping it on an external media like DVDRW.

The question is, *how* secure do you need to erase the drive? I think unless you obliterate it with a 12 guage shotgun and then melt the peices with a blowtorch, the FBI/CIA/very rich people, could still figure out how to get the data. I destroy my old data using what storage experts call a block-erasure utility such as Darik’s Boot and Nuke. WTF were you doing with mission-critical private data sitting on a hard drive unencrypted? :blink: Anything I need to keep 100% private gets 2048 bit encrypted (RSA, twofish, whatever) and put on a DVDRW which gets stored in a wall safe. If you want to check it, run a disk recovery program (google 'free NTFS recovery', etc.) and see if the data is recoverable or not. Then use any free 'drive eraser' program (like the ones voidpharoh and Davey suggested). Thanks to the work of developer Darik Horn, there’s an excellent tool to wipe data off of a hard disk: Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN).

You can download a utility from the hard drive manufacturer's website to 'zero' the drive.

Dariks boot and nuke