What do you (or your company) use for wiping a machine?

Question

I have two computers, and I'm thinking about getting rid of one of them, but I want to make sure that it's clean of anything of mine before doing so. What have you used or does your company use for this purpose?

Answer 1

There's hardly anything better than DBAN.

BAN = Boot and Nuke.

I suggest you visit the page and give it a try.

Answer 2

Boot and Nuke

Answer 3

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

Answer 4

BCWipe all the way.

Answer 5

@Vaibhav - I like that - that's ace. I've always just re-installed XP and wiped all free space using BCWipe.

Answer 6

For personal machines that have had a lot of personal data on them such as banking information, I prefer complete physical destruction of the hard drive. It's amazing how much damage you can do with a heavy duty sledge hammer, and the data should be pretty much impossible to recover by people with 'normal' budgets.

If the machine is an older one, it is then passed on to a recycler without the drive. If it is still a decent machine, I'll donate it with a different (wiped!) drive in it.