erase a hard drive properly

[ilambat]

is there a software that will format a hard drive properly meaning erasing all data as formating on xp doesn't do that it leaves some data behind. im formatting 3-4 hard drives a day and need a software that will completely and throughly wipe out hard drive data...

and also i have to do this due to data protection act.

so can anyone recomend some softwares and methods

[halcyonforever]

I recomend Killdisk Pro (http://www.killdisk.com/) This tool allows you to meet the government standard from Department of Defense 5220.22-M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Industrial_Security_Program)

[halcyonforever]

To summarize... you need to write data to the entire disk over the existing data. The standard pass is 3 writes of a number set is 1 pass, 7 pass is industry standard for data security.

Be aware this takes A LONG TIME. To meet requirements, anticipate the computer running probably a few days. A single 13gb write pass took about 14 hours at last recollection.

[Luke122]

DBAN is what I use.. conforms to Canadian Government and RCMP specifications for data destruction. About 6-8 hrs / 20gb drive when I did a dozen or so a few months ago.