How to wipe all data from a hard drive?

[Dubious_Beans]

Well, I bought a new Seagate 1TB hard drive a couple weeks ago and it's already being troublesome.

When powered up it isn't always detected by windows. Often I have to restart the machine several times to make it "see" that drive.
I've swapped different power and data cables onto it, but it's still flaky. Other drives in the system are fine.

Anyway, I'm gonna send this sucker back to Seagate and I'd like to nuke all the data that's on it now before it goes back.

Any suggestions on thoroughly wiping data off a disk before it goes back to the factory?


Thanks!

[therealnickb]

Format it?

[gschoelles]

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ix=seb&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=hard%20drive%20wipe&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&gs_l=&pbx=1&fp=5d7b642d94243993&ix=seb&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=694

[SouperMan]

If you can see it in BIOS, use DBAN, or Darrik's Boot and Nuke.

[bigmike82]

+1 on dban. Just make sure that you're selecting the correct drive when you run it.

[r3dn3ck]

Any of a number of utilities. The key to success is to basically re-write to every sector of the drive several times. Write-one's across the disk.

If you're in the bay area I can help.

If you really want to destroy a drive (as different than wipe) then a degausser is the option. I have one at my desk. Induces very high currents in electronic circuits and physically destroys the entire drive. Instantly voids warranties.

If you can't get the drive to mount sufficiently for you to use any of the dban tools feel free to PM me and I'll put it in the degausser for you if you want. Note that seagate will not honor a warranty for a drive that has been degaussed.

[speedrrracer]

If you can see it in BIOS, use DBAN, or Darrik's Boot and Nuke.

+1 for DBAN

[Dubious_Beans]

+1 on dban. Just make sure that you're selecting the correct drive when you run it.

Thanks for the dban suggestion. I'll give that one a try.

@r3dn3ck:
Thanks for the degauss offer.
I want to send the drive back to seagate for warranty, so that's not an option.

The drive still works once it's been up and running for a few minutes, it's just hard to "get it started" in the morning.
It appears to be a temperature related problem and when it's cold it won't spin up.

There's nothing really critical on the drive but I'd like to clean all my family photos and emails off it before I sent it to seagate.

Thanks all for the suggestions!

[Joe]

I was going to suggest ccleaner but Dban looks good. You can always do both

[Turbinator]

Seagate makes something called SeaTools, which is free. It can also write 0's to your HDD, as a way to wipe the drive completely. You could use this tool - fairly straightforward.

As others have said, don't wipe the wrong drive..

Turby

[JDay]

Parted Magic is all you need. It will perform a secure erase of the drive. Use the instructions from this link, it works the same for a HDD as it does for an SSD. It sounds like your power supply might be too weak for your system though, how many watts is it and what are your system specs?

http://blog.corsair.com/?p=4484

EDIT: You could also have a short in that power cable.