Lab life – disc wiping

A couple of days ago, we received a donation of a rather smart machine; this will be refurbished and offered for sale as part of our refurbishment project, for which we currently have a selection of machines complete with a full set of software (internet, office, entertainment and multimedia applications) available starting from £30.

The donor of this particular machine also requested that the existing data on the hard drives (yes, it has 2. Ed. 🙂 ) be wiped before we start our usual procedure of installing Ubuntu Linux and BW volunteer Jim was yesterday doing the wiping. We can do this if we’re asked and use a very simple little tool for the process – a Linux live CD that rejoices in the snappy title of Darik’s Boot And Nuke (aka DBAN). According to the developers:

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 a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

DBAN is a free software product that can be used at home or in a business at zero cost. The only official place to obtain DBAN is by download at this web site. We do not sell DBAN media.

As you can see, it’s a very nifty bit of kit (and all in a 10.9 MB disk image download too. Ed.) – all the more so since the menu options include securely wiping and destroying all data to US military standards.

So, any potential donors out there, just remember: if you’d like your data wiped, just ask. 🙂