When you’re selling or donating a computer, it’s just common sense to wipe the hard drive or restore it to factory defaults to remove any private data that might still reside on the disk. Unfortunately, that’s not nearly good enough to ensure no one will ever be able to recover it. In fact, it’s easy to recover data using any decent recovery software, which should be able to recover files removed from the recycle bin or even from a partition or disk which has been formatted. That’s because deleting a file or formatting a disk doesn’t actually delete anything other than the entry in the master file table. The previously occupied space it made available, but until a new file operation overwrites it, it will be possible to recover. Sometimes people can recover deleted data years after it has supposedly been deleted. If you’re selling or donating an old computer or any other data-bearing device, that’s probably not something you want to happen.
Securely sanitize your storage devices
Active@ KillDisk is a powerful and portable solution (meaning it doesn’t need to be installed on the computer to use it) for securely erasing any writable storage media. This will ensure that any data on it remain fully unrecoverable. Active@ KillDisk is available in the form of a software app that you can run from its own bootable self-contained operating environment or as an industrial-grade hardware system featuring its own rack-mounted server blade. This is ideal for businesses users who need a way to quickly erase large numbers of drives in parallel. The desktop version can erase up to 15 disks simultaneously, while the industrial system has space for 25 disks. No matter which version you use, the results are the same, but the hardware-based versions are ideal for more demanding users with lots of drives to erase. All erasure procedures are carried out in accordance with the US Department of Defense 5220-22M standard, as well as more than 20 other internationally recognizing data sanitization standards.
What’s new in version 12?
Active@ KillDisk version 12, introduced on October 11, provides many new features and improvements. For compliance and archiving purposes, you can print customizable disk labels with essential information about the erased disk and the procedures used to securely wipe it. Certificates and reports have been refined for a better user experience too. Other improvements have been made to the disk serial number detection algorithm, and there are now sound notifications for process completion, all of which are customizable. The stability of the software has also been improved for those working with drives which are failing or damaged in some way (but still need erasing). Active@ KillDisk also comes with the latest version of Active@ Boot Disk, which now sports an upgraded WinPE interface based on Windows 10 build 1903. It now fully supports SATA and PCI-Express NVMe M.2 solid state disks and the boot disk creator application has been improved.
If your goal is to securely erase data so that it can never end up in the wrong hands, then look no further than https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html .