PCA Forums

for windows 7 version. I have a disk wipe utility that will only run in a windows environment. I'd like to make a bootable USB drive with Rufus and and then burn the ISO on that USB. I then can copy over the utility DiskWipe https://www.diskwipe.org/

I was considering using DBAN, but it looks like it was bought out or not for free? I have a hard drive spinner that I want to make sure no data can be recovered. It's a 2 TB drive.
Also, what does one use to securely erase a SSD?

Any other ideas are welcome.

Dban is still free: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/

An excellent WinPE that has a ton of utilities is Gandalf's Windows 10PE. It has a DiskWipe built in, and much, much more. Used that the other day to fix a registry problem on one of my Media Center PCs that wouldn't boot. I have a very old copy from 2015. I should update it:

http://windowsmatters.com/

Unless you're a bank, or work for an international crime syndicate, DOD Short is more then sufficient.

For SSDs, you should use the manufacturer's utility. SSDs have an electronic way of just resetting all the bits, and the hidden swapped out bad memory. Most manufacturers have a utility (like Samsung's Magician) that will update the BIOS and includes a wipe feature.

SSDs also have a common command set that can be invoked by a program designed to wipe them. Some are mentioned here: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-secu ... ssd-drive/

Steve Gibson will have a utility that can reliably erase anything, that's a spinoff of his new Spinrite code. He's already trademarked the name. He was going to make it part of Spinrite but people wanted it as a separate utility.

Looks like Gandalf doesn't post download links to his ISO to avoid copyright issues, and getting them from some sites that claim to have it can be risky. I just posted an ISO of the version I use on my shares in the OS folder.

I don't see an OS folder in the shares.

Ack. Somehow my shares got messed up. Fixed it now, but it'll take a while to scan and index.