# How to REALLY erase a hard drive: Secure Erase



## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

Ok, so most of the folks on TSG are probably thinking this is another DBAN or Boot and Nuke tip - uh, no, not unless you have a hard drive older than 2001.

Secure Erase is a set of commands embedded in most ATA drives built since 2001. If this is so wonderful, why havent you heard of it before? Because its been disabled by most motherboard BIOSes.

Secure Erase is a loaded gun aimed right at all your data. And Murphys Law is still in force. But hey, if youre smart enough to read Storage Bits, youre smart enough to not play with Secure Erase until you need to.

Note: There is no data recovery from Secure Erase. Repeat - no recovery! Who says so - Both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Institute for Standards and Testing (NIST), who give it a higher security rating than external block overwrite software that youd have to buy.

Article here. Read the Readme file and follow the links in the article to the download webpage for Secure Erase.

-- Tom

P.S. Secure Erase applies to all ATA hard drives built since 2001, so older drives would still be advised to use the open source external block overwrite utility called Boot and Nuke that is free.


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## Stoner (Oct 26, 2002)

Morning Tom 
Interesting, thanks for the info.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Interesting program, I'll add that one to my links.


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