I am selling my PC and have formatted the drive as well, how do I ensure, that data is lost permanently from the drives?

Formatting your drive does not ensure complete deletion of all your sensitive data.Several data recovery software are capable of recovering data, from formatted drives. Hence, to ensure complete protection of your sensitive data, it is essential to make sure, that hard drive is completely overwritten by new data, at least three times.

REMO Data Sanitizer is one such utility, which overwrites your entire physical/logical drive sector-by-sector, to ensure safety from any data recovery software. This software is featured with intricate scan algorithms, prescribed by the US Department of Defense, US Navy, and other government agencies around the world.Try it Now!

Follow the steps given below, to completely erase data from your hard drive, using REMO Data Sanitizer.

Step 1: Launch the application either by double clicking the desktop shortcut, or by selecting the icon from the Programs list in the Start menu.

The Main window of the application pops up,as shown in Figure a.The window displays, all the logical, and physical drives connected to the PC.

Figure a: Main window

Step 2: Select the logical drive which contains the sensitive data to be erased, or select a physical drive, to erase the complete hard drive data, and click the Next button. As you click the Next button, a window to select the sanitizing method is displayed, as shown in Figure b.

Note: If the drive you are looking for is not displayed in the list of drives, click on the Refresh Drives button. This will display, the recently connected drives to the PC, making it easier for you to locate the physical/logical drive from which you want to wipe the data.

Figure b: Select Sanitizing method

The software provides nine different sanitizing methods, and they are classified into different levels, based on the security levels provided by them.

Sanitizing methods that offer “low” security levels

• Fast Zero Write
• Random Write
• US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M)

Sanitizing methods that offer “medium” security levels

• US Navy, NAVSO P-5239-26-RLL
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO standard
• German: VSITR

Sanitizing methods that offer “high” security levels

• DOD Standard 5220.28 STD
• Peter Gutmann Secure Deletion
• US Department of Defense (DoD 5220.22-M) + Guttman method

Select the appropriate Sanitizing method, and click on the Next button, to erase the selected logical drive, or the entire physical drive.

As you click the Next button, a window asking for confirmation, before start of the sanitizing process is displayed. Click on the OK button, to go ahead with the sanitizing process. The application starts to sanitize the sensitive data from selected drive. After the sanitizing process is complete, a message intimating the same is displayed.

Tags: data eraser, data sanitizer, data shredder, erase hard drive, hard disk wipe