How do I completely erase my PC?

garrett01

garrett01

Administrator
Staff member
Eraser uses the Dariks Boot and Nuke disk option to erase all your hard drives.

To use this option:
1. Place a floppy in your a: drive.

2. Click on the Start button and then choose Programs->Eraser->Create Boot Nuke Disk.

3. Ensure Writing on Floppy is ticked. 
Tick Formatting if your floppy needs to be formatted.

4. Click OK.
Result: Your Boot Nuke Disk has now been created.

5. Boot up your PC with the floppy still remaining in your a: drive.
Result: All drives will now be erased.

IMPORTANT: USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

For a summary:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/
Dariks Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.
 
Oh my god. I cant way untill I here about this on the news that some wanttobe hacker deleted everything from government computers.

Pretty cool though. Might come in use.

So is this better than just a low level format. You know write the entire drive with 0s.

cya,
Will
 
quote:Originally posted by Gusti
Just a hint: my diskette wears a special color in order NOT
to have it in the drive by error

[:(!]


A wise choice [:)]

Garrett
 
Just a question:
I am using windows XP home edition and would like to erase my hard drive.
If I am using DBAN, what do I need to do afterwards?
- Reinstall XP with the disk or win 98 as it was originally.
Thanks for your answer.

Thierry
 
quote:Reinstall XP with the disk or win 98 as it was originally.
Reinstall Windows XP directly. Make sure that you have your XP activation key handy.
 
Ive used Dariks Boot and Nuke well it done a good job on a 4gig hd , took 8hrs too complete the process. Dam if anybody can get anything off it.
I just want too see how good a job it does. Ill run a forensic on the HD later.
 
Sorry to be thick but which files do I need to download?
Should I download all pink highlighted files or select only 1.
Ive tried to download the 1st one called: dban-0.4.0_i386.iso
When time to open it arrived, ROXIO cd creator has started?!
Help please.

Thierry
 
quote:Originally posted by Gusti
Just a hint: my diskette wears a special color in order NOT
to have it in the drive by error.Thats a good idea, but DBAN does also prompt you before doing its thing (damn, and I wanted to slip it into my bosss floppy drive one day!).
 
quote:Thats a good idea, but DBAN does also prompt you before doing its thingYou can disable the boot prompt by writing the floppy disk, and then editing the SYSLINUX.CFG file. There is a comment in the CFG file that tells you what to change.
 
When running Dariks Boot and Nuke in default mode how many passess does it do ?
gathering from the lenght of time it took too run it must be pretty high .
I was wondering if , how too moditify the paraments in the *.cfg file
for higher Sanitizing !
 
quote:When running Dariks Boot and Nuke in default mode how many passess does it do ?Thirty-five. More information is in the FAQ.
quote:I was wondering if , how too moditify the paraments in the *.cfg file
for higher Sanitizing !Higher sanitizing is probably not worthwhile. If you wish to loop the wipe program, then you must rebuild DBAN.
 
is it enough to just wipe your HD??

if you really want to clean your computer up, dont you have to destroy the memory chips too?
 
>>if you really want to clean your computer up, dont you have to destroy >>the memory chips too?
The easy way to clean those is to clean the HD then load an os and start
running memory intensive applications.

Garrett
 
Anonymous said:
>>if you really want to clean your computer up, dont you have to destroy >>the memory chips too?
The easy way to clean those is to clean the HD then load an os and start
running memory intensive applications.

Garrett
Click to expand...

I was always under the imprestion that memory chips could only store data as long as that had a constant power feed. If this is true , wouldn't a complete shutdown , and unplug lasting for an 30min - 1hour do the trick?
 
No the memory chips will keep their settings as 'ghost' images

I am not sure if this is still the case with modern RAM.

I do remember back in my early days (showing my age here) having to electrically reset RAM chips. I imagine it is still the same today.

However actually getting at the info would be quite a task.

Garrett
 
It erases ALL hard drives, what if you have 2 HD's and just want to erase ONE of them?
 
Shane said:
It erases ALL hard drives, what if you have 2 HD's and just want to erase ONE of them?
Click to expand...

Even if the current version propts you, as to which HD you whant erased. The absolote safest, is to temperaly, remove ALL cables from the HD you whant to save that whay the BIOS will only see one HD ( th one still connected ) and tell DBAN that it is the only HD on this computer.
 
SammeyDW said:
Anonymous said:
>>if you really want to clean your computer up, dont you have to destroy >>the memory chips too?
The easy way to clean those is to clean the HD then load an os and start
running memory intensive applications.

Garrett
Click to expand...

I was always under the imprestion that memory chips could only store data as long as that had a constant power feed. If this is true , wouldn't a complete shutdown , and unplug lasting for an 30min - 1hour do the trick?
Click to expand...

admin said:
No the memory chips will keep their settings as 'ghost' images

I am not sure if this is still the case with modern RAM.

I do remember back in my early days (showing my age here) having to electrically reset RAM chips. I imagine it is still the same today.

However actually getting at the info would be quite a task.

Garrett
Click to expand...

While I don't doubt that there could be "ghost" data left in the memory chips, there's a big difference between disks and RAM. The filesystems in use on disks use a table of contents to track which files are where. When you "delete a file" you're not actually deleting the file's data, you're just marking that location as being available in the table of contents. That's how the DOS command undelete works - as long as none of the data in that location has changed, you're just putting the entry back in the table of contents for that file. With filesystems, the "delete" commands don't actually delete the data, they just mark it as "nothing useful here, so you can write something else there if you want". The actual data of the file is left unchanged on the disk until something else is written there, which could be in one second or in one month.

Dynamic RAM (DRAM) is used for PC memory. It only retains its memory while powered. There are also devices that use static RAM (SRAM), which can retain the memory contents without power. Even in modern storage devices, SRAM isn't used much since it costs a lot more than DRAM and a little battery. If you do have something that uses SRAM, you would probably want to treat it like a disk and make sure that you overwrite any possible data with garbage. With regular PC RAM, it's constantly being overwritten, and it's used randomly (so your OS won't always load in the first __MB and your word processor in the next __MB, etc.) so you shouldn't have the same patterns written in the same spots repeatedly. Combine that with the lack of memory retention, and there's probably not much left there to worry about.
 
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