Erasing your hard drive with zero fill utilities is the easiest way to ensure no one gets their hands on your files when you go to sell online or donate. “Zeroing out” prevents most data recovery software programs and methods from discovering your files.

It isn’t as secure as a secure three-pass wipe, DoD seven step erasing, Gutman or physical degaussing. These methods are more time consuming and only needed for the most sensitive data.

Most hard drive manufacturers include a free utility for users. This utility can be burned to a CD which is then used to boot in to to start the data wiping. Here is a list of utilities by drive manufacturer:

Hitachi
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Maxtor and Seagate
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

Samsung
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html

Western Digital
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en

KillDisk
http://killdisk.com/

DBan
http://www.dban.org/

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