HDShredder : Securely Erase Hard Disks

When you give away your old hard disks, you should always securely erase all the contents so that nobody is able to recover your personal data stored on it. There are many tools like Dariks Boot and Nuke (DBAN) and Eraser for wiping data off your hard disk. HDShredder is another such free tool which can be used to securely erase the contents from your hard disks and partitions easily.

HDShredder deletes the contents of hard disks and other mass storage media reliably at physical level. HDShredder can also be applied to individual partitions and user can select to perform the deletion according to international security standards. HDShredder works independent of partition layout, file system, and operating system. It also works with proprietary formats which otherwise would be unaccessible.

HDShredder is designed by Miray Software and is available in five different editions – Free, Basic, Standard, Professional and Enterprise. You can download the free edition from their web site. The free edition can only erase an entire hard disk. Other paid editions are also able to erase partitions and come with more features. The download is around 8 megabytes and is in form of a ZIP archive which contains an ISO image for creating a bootable CD, a floppy disk image file for creating a bootable floppy disk and a portable HDShredder program which you do not have to install.

HDShredder

The first window of HDShredder lets you choose which object you want to erase – an entire hard disk or a partition on the hard disk. The free edition of HDShredder does not allow you to erase partitions – this option is only available in the paid editions. The next step is to choose a drive or partition from the list. After that you are shown deletion methods. In HDShredder you can choose from three automatic methods, from fifteen standards or you can customize your own deletion methods.

After choosing options like SmartDefectSkip, Cached Memory and Animation etc., you can start the erasing process. The erasing process may take from few minutes to few hours depending on your choice of the options, method of deletion and the size of the hard disk.

HDShredder

The free edition of HDShredder deletes hard disks and other storage media ultimately and reliably. Afterwards, these media can be sold or dumped without any risk that former data can be restored, even not with recovery software. You can download HDShredder from http://www.miray.de/download/sat.hdshredder.html.