Deleting data from a hard drive for sale?

Question

Hard disks

Hello! There is a task to clean hard drives without tails in order to sell. The discs contained personal documents. I know that there are programs that allow you to recover even deleted files. There are about a dozen disks, the volume is from 250 to 500 GB.
All cleaned up with Acronis. Some were installed OS (Windows). If you put Linux or BSD several times on disks. Install and delete, and re-install, then there will be a different file system, and there will be no possibility to pull out files even with programs (the old ones that were under Windows)?
Or tell me more methods, except for a hammer, so that the data is definitely erased from the disks forever
Thank you.

Answer 1

If you put Linux or BSD several times on disks. Install and delete, and re-install, then there will be a different file system, and there will be no possibility to pull out files even with programs (the old ones that were under Windows)?

There is no big sense, information about the old FS is a few bytes at the beginning of the disk.
There is a small console program sdelete that can overwrite disks many times, and use it.

Answer 2

Under Linux:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=4k
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=4k

Under Windows:
cipher /w:D:\
Only specify the correct path to the drive in both options.

Answer 3

Install and delete, and re-install, then there will be a different file system, and there will be no possibility to pull out files even with programs (the old ones that were under Windows)?

Installing any OS is writing new information to disk. Files physically overwritten during this process cannot be recovered. Those that "did not cover" - you can. A program like R.saver will suffice.

methods, other than a hammer, to ensure that data is permanently erased from disks

Take R.tester (disk tester) and run a full write test. He will destroy everything. Some other program that can check the entire "clearing" will also work.
At the same time, get beautiful speed graphs that you can save and attach to the lot description as confirmation that the disks are in order.
There are different scripts for recording in R.tester (including those with benchmark), you can also choose the mode, as a result you get beautiful graphs in the form of "birds":
https://blog.rlab.ru/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/Hi...
Or you can run Security Erase to erase the HDD itself. If the hard drive supports this function, it will be visible on the main screen on the right, there will also be the time required for a complete erasure.
From the options built into Windows, you can run a full format (long). Windows must be Vista or newer.
If you only want to erase specific files and folders, you can use Eraser .
PS
About residual magnetization and the like, do not read and do not think. You definitely didn't have any data on the disks for which it makes sense to try to do something like that.
If they were there, then there would be no opportunity to sell the discs. You would destroy such HDDs only physically and under strict accountability.

Answer 4

The Real McCoy (SDelete) .
Do you see the data? No. And they are.

Answer 5

I use the low-level format with the old mhdd

Answer 6

There is a tramp, stupid and slow, but working way. A large file is taken, for example a movie in BDrip or an image of something. And the entire disk is clogged with this file until errors about the lack of space rain down.

Answer 7

It is enough to do a full format of the disk even in Windows

Answer 8

Can be done with CCleaner

spoiler