Best free HDD eraser?

[thegreb]

Seeing as I want to sell on my old laptop, I'm going to need to erase the hard drive. I don't want to buy a hard drive erasing tool though, for this one time job. With that in mind, which free hard drive eraser would you all recommend? I do intend to reinstall Windows 7 after the HDD is erased, but I obviously don't want to risk anyone retrieving my personal data.

 

[ubuysa]

Ccleaner from http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner is free and it has a very good disk wipe tool, you can even select the number of wipe passes.

 

[thegreb]

Thanks, I'll give that one a go. What's DBAN like? I've read that it's supposed to be a very good tool.

 

[thegreb]

Turns out I can't wipe my C drive with Ccleaner, even if I install and run the program from a flash drive.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Turns out I can't wipe my C drive with Ccleaner, even if I install and run the program from a flash drive.

You'd have to add the drive to another computer and do the wipe from there.

 

[thegreb]

Is there a hard disk eraser available which I can boot from a CD, so I don't have to take both my laptops apart?

 

[ubuysa]

Turns out I can't wipe my C drive with Ccleaner, even if I install and run the program from a flash drive.

Ok, I didn't realise that. have a look at this then.

 

[thegreb]

No problem. After posting that I didn't want to take both my laptops apart, I decided I might as well. So I've now got my Skyfire's hard drive in my Vortex laptop. I'm about to download and install Ccleaner. I'll let you know how it goes after I've run the disk eraser.

Edit: I thought it was going to take all day, but it's going through it quite quickly with 3 passes.

 

[mrducking]

best HDD cleaner: EMP

 

[Wozza63]

I think GParted has a version that can be booted which should be able to erase hard drives.