The three pass “DoD Short” is (still) my favorite method, although more robust options are available. M key on your keyboard to select an erase method. Once DBAN is up and running in all its blue and white glory, all you have to do is select the disk to erase and press the button. If you’re hoping to erase a RAID-capable hard drive, you’ll also need to disassemble the RAID volume and set each drive to JBOD mode before you begin.
#Mid 2012 macbook pro ssd vs hdd Pc
Once you’ve downloaded it and created a bootable USB drive, insert the drive into your PC and tell your computer to boot from the USB drive rather than your hard drive. To make sure everything goes well, you should also dive into your BIOS settings and make sure your drives are set to IDE mode.ĭownload DBAN, a tried-and-true option for wiping hard drives that’s loved by geeks around the world despite not being updated in years. Since you’ll be deleting data from the drive that likely contains your PC’s operating system, most tools that erase entire drives require you to move the program to a flash drive or create a bootable USB from it. Securely Erase a Mechanical Hard Drive with DBANĪ note about whole disk erasing software: Erasing entire drives requires slightly more complicated solutions than the easy-to-use apps mentioned earlier. (I usually choose the three pass DoD option.) Click on Add data to select files to erase and choose an erasing method. From there, a window appears with task and time scheduling options. Simply start the program, click the arrow next to the “Clear Calendar” option at the top of the screen, then select New task. If you need to delete only specific files and folders rather than entire drives, the open source eraser is the tool for you. Securely erase specific files with Eraser Nevertheless, we have used all of these methods successfully in the past. If you choose to erase your data using any of these methods, you do so at your own risk, so we advise you to make a backup before you begin. Some utilities support “Gutmann” level protection with 35 passes, but three passes is sufficient for the US Department of Defense’s “short” specification and for many armies around the world. The more you overwrite your data, the less likely it is to be recovered. A utility that performs three passes overwrites your disk with ones and zeros three times. Each pass means a complete overwrite of the data.
#Mid 2012 macbook pro ssd vs hdd software
Drive erasure utilities allow you to specify the number of “passes” the software performs.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about terminology.