Hard Drive Eraser

- Usage

The usage of Hard Drive Eraser is very simple. On the left side pick the drive you want to erase. Please note that the partitions will be listed as drives too, so if your hard drive has several partitions be careful to pick the partition you really want to destroy. Always double check this. If you want to erase the whole hard drive regardless of how many partitions are in it you will have to erase each partition that belongs to this drive, one by one.

On the right side of main application screen choose the shredding scheme. Default is DOD 5220-22.M which is a recommended one.

-Write Zeros: The simplest method, writes only binary zeros.
- DOD 5220-22.M: More powerful, overwrites data in three passes with random values. This is the default eraser method.
- US Army: Three passes algorithm that complies to the US Army specifications.
- Peter Guttman: Overwrites data in 35 passes. Very slow and in most cases not required.

Than, choose the file system. If you are using Windows Xp or Windows Vista it will almost certainly be NTFS, which is a default. Quick Format is an option which tells the program to use a quick windows formatting instead of full format. Since the data will be permanently erased there is no need to wait for full formatting so in most cases you should leave a "quick format" checked.

Please note that you can only erase a hard drive, or partition which is not used as a system partition from within the program is running.

Press "Start" and wait for application to erase a hard drive partition. The speed of erasing is dependant on the algorithm you choose and your system specs, particularly hard drive speed.

I will stress again that, even though Hard Drive Eraser is tested and used many times I can not be held responsible for any loss or damage caused by the usage of this program. If you prefer the professional support and safety pay for a good commercial sollution.