Free hard drive killer

[Kage]

I was researching hard drive wipers, and first looked at Killdisk which offers a free version. But the free version doesn't wipe to satisfactory standards; it only copies 0's to the disk.

This on the other hand is a free one I just encountered which can write 0's - 1's to military standards for any one selling a hard drive or getting rid of an old computer, or in my case, sending some back to be tested for reliability.

About DBAN | Darik's Boot And Nuke

I'm going to test it now anyhow, as tomorrow, my two 1TB drives are going to be tested, and hopefully they'll find the culprit and offer me a new drive

 

[Tommy Boy]

Kill disk is satisfactory if you are going to sell your pc or something, I used it and it worked well.

That other one looks good though.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

Sandy Bridge xP

OT: Usually, for companies atleast, drives get physically destroyed rather than thoroughly wiped.

 

[Kage]

It took around 6 hours, just to write 0's to the drives with 1 pass.
If I was to do even a medium DoD wipe for example with 3 passes, it would have took in the region of 18 hours for the 1TB drives haha.

Start time: 00:28:33
End time: 06:05:24

What I do not understand however, is that if a drive has been written over 100% with 0's or 1's, why should someone do 3 or 7 passes, if data should thoroughly be wiped the first go?
Surely placing even 0's on the drive is essentially removing all data from ever being found? I don't understand that.

Drives are going back tomorrow morning (couldn't do it today)