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Securely erase a mechanical hard drive with dban

download dban—a time-tested option for erasing hdds that's loved by geeks around the world despite the fact that it hasn't been updated in years. once you've downloaded it and burned the .iso to a disc, insert the disc into your pc and tell your computer to boot to the optical drive rather than your hard drive. if you're hoping to erase a raid-enabled hard drive, you'll need to disassemble the raid volume and set each disk to jbod mode before you start, as well.

once dban is up and running in all its blue-and-white glory, you simply select which disk to wipe and press the m key on your keyboard to select an erasure method. the three-pass "dod short" is (still) my preferred method, though more-robust options are available. press f10 to start the wipe once everything looks good. depending on the method you choose and the size of the disk, erasing the data can take hours or even days. bring a sandwich and a copy of pcworld magazine, or better yet, walk away and do something else while dban does its magic.