IT Toolbox: Darik's Boot & Nuke

Darik's Boot & Nuke is a handy little utility I have used for quite a few years.  Essentially, DBAN is a light-weight disc wiper utility that securely and automatically wipes all information from any hard disc it can detect.  It comes in extremely handy for bulk data erasure or emergency data destruction.

There are various ways of installing it. My preferred method is just burning a boot ISO image, but you can also load it on a floppy or a usb flash drive.  The application is a slimmed down linux shell, so it also works on linux-based systems.

It offers several wipe methods depending on your level of paranoia:
Quick Erase (Fastest)
Canadian RCMP TSSIT OPS-II Standard Wipe
DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe
Gutmann Wipe
PRNG Stream Wipe

I use it when customer's bring in a computer that has more virii than a lot lizard.  This helps to make sure we are rid of any nasty little payloads that are hidden somewhere on the disc.  Also, I usually make it a point to do a DoD wipe on any computer that leaves my office just to make sure no sensitive information leaks out.

If you have need for a low-level formatting utility I would definitely suggest checking this out.