Darik’s Boot and Nuke
July 28, 2006WARNING: The following program, when used as a start up, can and will, delete data unrecoverably. I take no responsibility for what you do with this program.
Darik’s Boot and Nuke, where do I begin?
First let me start by apologizing that there will be no screen shots for this program because none would survive… which is ok, because while DBAN is a Good program, it sure is Ugly.
DBAN is a self-contained, Linux based program, that can be put on a floppy or CD, to be used as a data destroying tool. Basically, DBAN will wipe a hard drive thoroughly.
The creator of DBAN says emergency data destruction, however, DBAN has never seemed very fast to me. Every time I run it I just type ‘autonuke’ and let the program run its course. It has taken about 3 hours to clean my 80gb hard drive. However there are other options besides ‘autonuke’ which you can have DBAN run, I have never thoroughly explored them.
I stumbled across DBAN maybe two years ago when looking for something to clean my hard drive better than just a format. It seemed to me that every time I formatted my computer and reinstalled the operating system, I would get the same errors with the same programs when reinstalled. I thought that this could be stored registry data that just gets compressed and not fully deleted when you format a drive. So I put a query in Google Groups and got DBAN back as an answer. Thanks whoever. I used it to wipe a computer, reinstalled, and never go the errors again.
I never looked back.
DBAN does clean a hard drive to basically nothing. In my experience, if was running Windows 98 SE I had to format and create a partition after running DBAN, then install. If I was going to put Windows XP on the drive, I just ran DBAN and dropped the XP disk in.
Basically, DBAN is a data destroying machine that is Ugly but Good. Use it, love it, become one with it.
I apologize, after looking at the website that goes along with DBAN, there is one screen shot which can be found here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/screenshot.png.
Get DBAN here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/
DBan in floppy or cd is great it took me two & half hrs to wipe my 80gb drive the software has a few options on the type of wipe that you can have from a quick one about 26 min to the Dod which is by default My version was 1.7v as for ugly there is a new one on the way with a meter bar from the wish list that people have suggested plus more but it may take time this is open software so the best thing is its free it can hold its head high as one of the best wipe drive software bar none in the world Cheers PR
i erased my comp with dban and nothing happens when i put in the winxp install disc…help please!!
You have to make your CD rom as 1st boot