How to Completely Erase a Hard Drive?

Completely Erase a Hard Drive:

It's more difficult than simply erasing everything from a hard drive if you would like to entirely remove it. You must take additional measures in order to truly delete hard drive data forever. Formatting a hard drive is a typical approach to "erase" data, however this just makes the data "lost" to the computer's operating system because it doesn't actually "erase" the hard drive of its data.

When you check at the drive's contents, it seems empty since the OS cannot see the data. However, all of the data is still present and, barring a complete hard disc wipe, can be recovered with specialised hardware or software.

The most appropriate thing you can do is thoroughly wipe a hard disc before recycling it or even throwing it away. If you don't, you run the risk of re-disclosing private information that you thought you had destroyed, such as passwords and account numbers.

• Using free data destruction software, often known as hard drive eraser software or disc wipe software, is by far the simplest way to fully erase a hard drive.
• Whatever name you give it, a data destruction program—such as DBAN—is a piece of software that overwrites a hard drive sufficiently many times and in a certain fashion to make it nearly difficult to recover data from it.
• Using a degausser to damage the magnetic domains on the disc—the method by which a hard drive stores data—is a different way to Completely Erase a Hard Drive. Some automatic degaussers authorised by the NSA can Completely Erase a hard drives in a single hour while costing tens of thousands of dollars in the US. Hard drive manual degaussing wands, which have received NSA approval, cost about $500.
• The only method to positively and permanently guarantee that the data on a hard drive is gone is to physically destroy it. It is impossible to read data from a hard drive that has stopped functioning as a hard disc, just as it is impossible to recover written information from a burned piece of paper.

The NIST Guidelines for Media Sanitization (800-88 Rev. 1) declare that Completely Erase a Hard Drive renders data recovery "impossible using state-of-the-art laboratory techniques and results in the subsequently inability to use the media for data storage."

The majority of hard drive erasure standards mention a number of methods for physically destroying a hard drive, including disintegration, grinding, pulverisation, incineration, melting, and shredding. A hard drive can be destroyed on your own by repeatedly driving nails or drilling holes through it, making sure to puncture the hard drive platter each time.