$99 and $150 is kinda expensive for my personal pocket, but for an IT department this is a must have little gift. It would be great if it comes with a T-shirt that says "meet DoD HDD sanitation specifications" it sounds dirty enough.

dysthymia

um, why separate versions? i don't want to buy two things for the same task...

rainfever

Discjockey already does this and more.

Razta

or you could just get a degausser and erase multiple drives at once. New they go for a couple hundred. But with analog tape waving bye bye you could find one used for cheap.

calaverasgrandes

I still like the idea of sending HDs through a wood chipper. There is no question about the state of your data after something like that.

cjw333

@werk: This is why I wish Gizmodo had a more advanced commenting systing.. I immediately realized i had misread the title.. i thought it was called the "Drive eRazer Tabula" haha

Wegmans

A drill press can do the same thing in under 5 minutes.

islandmonk

@Wegmans:
tabula rasa = clean slate

We could use a couple of these at the office; thanks for the post.

werk

Rasas? is that Sanskrit?

Wegmans

@Skeptical_Geezer: yeah, but it would have to be strong enough it would erase the credit card magstripes in your wallet if you got within 10 feet of it.

the point behind NOT degaussing drives is so you can reuse the drives. I've got a pile in my server closet I have to wipe the data on, then donate to charity so they get some more use out of them things. Degaussing is permanent, and fatal to a hard drive - can't be used, has to be tossed or recycled.

doofusgumby

uh, single pass does not meet DoD or NSA specs to my knowledge (AF Vet). triple overwrite is the requirement last time I checked.

doofusgumby

Wouldn't a large (by large I mean STRONG)magnet do as well?

Skeptical_Geezer

Perfect for businesses that needs to completely erase data from hard drives frequently.
Main thing here isn't how fast you erase data, but that you can erase it without a computer.

For truly paranoids, a woodchipper, thermite, drills or degausser would work best.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Multipass

John

@doofusgumby:
Whatever, I'm putting it where I put my companion cube..

Wegmans

Okay maybe for an IT department, but I have a cheap drill press downstairs that will toast a drive in less than a minute. A few passes with a 3/8" drill bit and you'd need to be a three-letter agency to get anything. Fast, cheap, and good enough for my needs.

deeddawg

Wow...pretty cool.

Steve19970

Two hours is too long when the FBI is breaking down your front door.

theimmc

@JOHN
haha

this can be handy for someone that needs to format a lot of drives, but i don't get why they separated IDE and SATA and charge so much.

origamimavin

The White House has ordered the entire stock.

lucky_you

Does this or does it not render the hard drive useless?

Jesse in Japan

@doofusgumby: Maybe the single-pass version would be OK for FOUO information on drives...
But yeah, personally never heard of a single pass being good by any official DoD standard.

Though I'd like a single-pass version to zap my old drives before tossing or recycling them.

thepounder

Can't you just use a pretty powerful electromagnet, or will that make the drive completely unusable?

WCD_Thor

Watch it Shred!
[www.ssiworld.com]

Snorbalp

Anyone ever try eraser? it's free, does single or 3 (or more passes)

Also features a right-click plug-in for Windows Explorer that instead of deleting, you "erase" and it overwrites it 35 times. Now, that's deleting.

[www.heidi.ie]

sanjsrik

@RATZA,

Do you have a URL for that software? I've been looking for this for work.

sanjsrik

@deeddawg: The point behind it is to erase the drive but still be able to re-use it at a later time. Try that with your drill press. Besides that, a drill press will just damage the portion of the disk where the drill went through. The remain untouched portions of the disk could technically still be read using the right tools. Your solution is the equivalent of taking an audio tape, cutting out a 2 inch section of tape and throwing it out. The remaining tape could still be read.

yougottabekidding

@sanjsrik: Probably a good, cheap solution. Now get eraser to do that without the PC altogether. You failed to realize that this device doesn't require a PC. That's the advantage this device provides.

yougottabekidding

DBAN is another good PC based hard drive eraser.
[dban.sourceforge.net]
Drop it on a CD or floppy.
However, I like the idea of not needing a PC. It's a little expensive though. The high end model is almost the price of a cheap PC.

anon4321

@anon4321: and IT departments (like mine) always have some old machines laying around that can do the job with some open source software or another, no need to buy a limited device like this.

doofusgumby

@doofusgumby: That's probably true of many I.T. shops, but some shops might find it handy to not put the drive into a different system just to erase it like this. Some shops might strip old or dead PCs for their still good and working FRUs such as hard drives before shipping the leftover junk to property control, and simply store the hard drives before reusing them or later disposal. Besides, it sounds like this device is more of a "connect and forget" scenario requiring no boot up time from another hard drive or CD, nor the running of software to erase the drive. It's just a time saver is all, plus simple enough that you wouldn't need to dedicate a highly technical person to erase all of your drives (i.e. a temp). For your I.T. shop there might not be a need for that time savings, but for others it might be. The only thing I can see an argument for is that it can only erase one drive at a time. What it needs is to be able to erase 5-10 drives at once to be even more useful to an I.T. shop.

yougottabekidding

@theimmc: That's what thermite is for! :)

hnkelley

It's a bit pricy, but you can get the kit that handles SATA and 2.5/3.5" IDE/PATA HDD for $200 instead of having to spend more on several separate units. In my IT dept, we keep a spare PC (which also has SCSI) and use Boot Nuke (AKA DBAN). Works great! We're going to build a bootable USB key with Boot Nuke so we can hit HDDs still in their respective PCs.

@YOUGOTTABEKIDDING: Boot Nuke loads a Linux kernel into RAM and runs from that, so you can boot and start a device, then pull your Floppy/CD/USB disk and go to the next unit if you are in a position to do the HDDs in their respective PCs. Also, you can load several HDDs onto a PC and Boot Nuke will hit all of them at once. The caveat is that the Linux used does not recognize SCSI drives or other USB drives, so, if needed, you'll have to adjust the OS before doing this with those types of devices.

hnkelley

@hnkelley: Oops... I just discussed this with a coworker who pointed out that several of the PCs we've recently wiped were, in fact, SCSI. So, Boot Nuke DOES do SCSI. I stand corrected.

hnkelley