NIST has tested hardware and software tools that can be used to wipe hard disks. Wiping tools are commonly used to clean temporary storage media. This can happen prior to an analysis in order to prevent data from an earlier case to contaminate data that is currently under examination. Also, storage media are commonly wiped as soon as they are no longer needed in order to minimize the risk of data leakage.
NIST has tested wiping devices and a popular boot CD.
WiebeTech Drive eRazer DRZR-2-VBND and Drive eRazer PRO are both able to wipe visible sectors. However, under some conditions the devices fail to clean sectors that are in a Host Protected Area (HPA) or Device Configuration Overlay (DCO). Please see the test report for a detailed description of the results. (PDF)
Voom HardCopy II does not support the ATA SECURE WRITE command. Therefore it has to overwrite sectors using the common ATA WRITE command. The tool succeeded in cleaning the test media. (PDF)
The popular boot CD Darik's Boot and Nuke 1.0.7 does not support ATA SECURE WRITE, too. According to the report, the vendor documents that the tool is unable to wipe secors in a DCO or HPA. Therefore these functions were not tested. (PDF)
