What's the best way to wipe a hard drive?

What's the best way to wipe a hard drive?

Dumb frog poster

HDD or Solid State?

Drill.

anti static, microfiber cloth

>dd command sanitise disk
>magnets
>burn it

dd or dban.

When I sold my laptop, I think I used DBAN.

But there might be some programs that run from Windows if you aren't wiping the OS drive.

For an SSD, you need to use the Secure Erase ATA command from linux or the drive's manufacture's own bootable program.

Shred (or DBAN), as many passes as you have the patience for (don't forget to do at LEAST 3 zero passes at the end) + strong magnet + drill + industrial incinerator

Overwrite with zeros, just using dd. Once will basically do for modern drives.

Melt with thermite if you prefer fun.

Also, maybe consider to put anything that needs to be secured on encryption. That way, you can ultimately only wipe the key and the drive is effectively ready to be scrapped, even if you have all your bank accounts and medical data on it.

PS: If it's just porn of you, share it.

It's the only thing that you leave behind that might actually be something people in a hundred years still care about. Maybe.

One pass with zeros is enough for modern drives.

Remove the power cord and use a damp piece of cloth. Make sure to wipe with a dry piece of cloth afterwards to soak up any moisture. Wait a minute or two and then plug the power back in.

A drill for an hdd, and for an ssd I dunno. Lick the chips

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

Pass three or four times if you're paranoid.

Wiping with zeros leaves some footprint behind since the data is not perfectly digital. i.e. if the bit was a 0 before, it'll be more "0" than a bit that was a 1 before.

So far no one has ever recovered even a file using this method (to public knowledge anyway), but it has been proven to be possible. The NSA might already be able to do it.

Eat it

Install Windows Millennium

Encrypt your shit. Throw the key away. Erase it with zeroes if you want to avoid FBI asking questions why the contents of that HDD are 100% randomized.

>not getting the joke

Is it related to designated shitting streets?

>implying
This isn't a good joke. The discussion of safe data destruction, however, is pretty interesting. Carmack should have lurked on Sup Forums before erasing his HDD in such a naive manner.

Dumb frogposter.

Ah... I got it now

It's the same way Stallman never actually installed GNU/Linucks but he knows the ins and outs of it more than anyone that's not Linus Torvalds.
Carmack probably just never bothered with it, it may seem simple to you but he's operating on another plane and just never needed to know how to securely wipe a HDD until now.

tl;dr: Carmack likely is autistic (not saying this in a memey way, he has a lot of the tell tale signs. t. someone who's autistic.)

Opening it up

Boot from an Ubuntu Live USB.

sudo shred -v -z /dev/sda

Fuck off Carmack, should have asked us before the lawsuit.