For most home users, DBAN is still a low risk, simple and effective tool to securely erase data on a hard drive. While it doesn’t erase hidden areas and bad sectors, the risks of personal data leakage there are relatively low – and powerful forensic techniques may be required to recover any such data.

DBAN does not destroy hard drives or make them unusable. Hard drives can be used again after wiping (as long as the hard drive is good). However, if an operating system is present on the hard drive, DBAN will securely wipe it, so the operating system will no longer boot.

Since you are wiping the disk, there isn’t a really bad way to stop it. Just wipe it again and all is clean… I wish there was a simple ESC key to stop it but alas.. you get the RESET button or the POWER button…

DBAN is great, but I pull the magnets and platters out of dead drives that are too far gone for a software wipe to run. The magnets are awesome for a variety of things, and I use the platters as coasters. A degausser would be awesome too. DBAN is probably preferred by most for completely wiping drives.

I’m the author of nwipe, and can tell you that the wiping code for DBAN and nwipe is exactly the same (nwipe is a fork of the DBAN software). Therefore, the effectiveness of the wipe is identical.

Stopping a wipe before it’s done will not harm your drive. When you install Windows it has a reformatting feature as part of the install. There is absolutely zero risk in stopping a wipe before it is finished.

the only option is to press f1 to continue. how do i back out? To cancel, remove the DBAN boot media and power-off the computer. To continue, just push the ENTER key.

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The most frequent reason for a DBAN problem is a bad floppy disk, bad CD-R, bad DVD-R, or non-bootable USB flash drive. Always give the manufacturer and model for your computer when you ask for help. More information is always better. Please read the FAQs below. There is a 90% chance that your question has already been…

DBAN erases the partition table, which causes all drive letters to disappear. The Microsoft Windows installer will automatically create a partition and filesystem during installation. Using FDISK after running DBAN is usually unnecessary.