Data Erasers
Simply deleting data, does not remove it from the disk, and recovering deleted files is a simple task.
Therefore, to protect your privacy, you should erase/ overwrite data from the disk, before you destroy, sell or give away a hard drive.
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Allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.
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Easy to use, but with some advanced features, including custom wipe patterns. Data Sanitation Methods: AFSSI-5020, DoD 5220.22-M, and Random Data.
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Microsoft Secure Delete is a CLI utility, uses DoD 5220.22-M.
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File, folder and drive portable eraser for Windows. Bundled with other tools to scan, analyze, and wipe, and other traces that were left behind. Includes context menu item, recycle bin integration.
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Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. DBAN is the free edition of Blanco, which is an enterprise tool designed for legal compliance.
Not Open Source -
C-based secure light-weight disk eraser, operated through the easy-to-use CLI or a GUI interface.
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A CLI utility that can be used to securely delete files and devices, to make them extremely difficult to recover.
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CLI utility for securely removing files, directories and whole disks, works on Linux, BSD and MacOS.
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Proprietary, closed-source suite of forensic data tools for mobile. The data eraser allows for both Android and iOS to be fully wiped, through connecting them to a PC.
Not Open Source
Objective of this page
Find the best free, open source, E2E encrypted and private alternative to now.
Compare Eraser vs Hard Disk Scrubber vs SDelete vs OW Shredder vs DBAN vs nwipe vs shred vs Secure Remove vs Mr. Phone vs
Discover the best Data Erasers tools for Android, iPhone, Linux, PC and Chrome to download now. And choose secure, self-hosted, peer-to-peer and independant alternatives in 2024
Stop the invasion of privacy from big tech, improve data security stay safe.
Notable Mentions
There's no need to use a third-party tool. You can boot into a UNIX-based system, mount the disk you need to erase, and use a command to write it with arbitrary data. For best results, this process should be repeated several times. This is a good way to wipe a disk, before selling or destroying it, to protect your data.
Such as the dd command,
is a tool to convert and copy files, but running
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M will quickly overwrite the whole disk with zeros.
Or badblocks which is intended to search for all bad blocks,
but can also be used to write zeros to a disk,
by running sudo badblocks -wsv /dev/sdd.
An effective method of erasing an SSD, it to use hdparm to issue a secure erase command, to your target storage device, for this, see step-by-step instructions via: wiki.kernel.org.
Finally, srm can be
use to securely remove files or directories, just run srm -zsv /path/to/file
for a single pass over.
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