A number of you utilize DBAN to clean a hard drive prior to giving away, selling, or discarding your PC. Nonetheless, because of its restricted capabilities, you might opt for a DBAN alternative. In this guide, we will present you to several details, including what DBAN is, how to use DBAN, and the top four alternatives to DBAN.

About DBAN

Before proceeding to the section about DBAN alternatives, let's have a general understanding of this tool.

DBAN, which stands for Darik's Boot and Nuke, is free open-source software intended to securely erase your hard drive on PCs, laptops, or servers. This ensures that all disk data is permanently erased and unrecoverable. Built on Linux, DBAN permits the erasure of PATA (IDE), SCSI, and SATA hard drives. If you need to wipe an SSD, DBAN is unable to assist.

It is worth noting that DBAN is preset to automatically wipe every disk it encounters by default unless you select the target hard drive.

How to Use DBAN

DBAN necessitates booting your PC from a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive to wipe your hard drive. Here's a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Visit the official website – http://m.miracleart.cn/link/7ad874c1df47197ed606592e1a07c230 and download the DBAN ISO, then burn it onto a USB flash drive or CD/DVD using Rufus.

Step 2: Restart your PC, press a boot key like F2, Del, etc., to enter BIOS, and set the DBAN USB drive as the primary boot sequence.

Step 3: In the DBAN interface, press Enter to initiate DBAN in interactive mode.

Step 4: All detected hard drives are listed here. Press J or K to scroll up or down and select the disk you wish to wipe, then hit Space to confirm the selection, and you'll notice the word "wipe" at the beginning of the chosen drive.

Step 5: Begin the erasing process by pressing F10. Upon completion, you will see the message "DBAN succeeded."

Why Require a DBAN Alternative

Although DBAN is a great hard drive eraser for you, it does have certain limitations that inevitably lead you to seek "DBAN alternative" or "DBAN alternative for SSD" online.

• It operates solely from a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD and performs the wiping operation in BIOS.
• There has been no update since June 2015, hence, no technical support is provided.
• DBAN can only wipe an HDD but not an SSD.

Below, let’s explore some alternatives to DBAN for SSDs and HDDs.

#1. MiniTool System Booster

As a professional PC optimization software, MiniTool System Booster focuses on enhancing the PC in various ways, such as freezing up RAM, cleaning up the PC, improving CPU, uninstalling apps, and more.

Beyond these features, MiniTool System Booster can serve as a DBAN alternative. Its Drive Scrubber feature enables you to securely wipe all data from a drive on an internal hard drive, external hard drive, or a removable USB device like a USB flash drive.

As long as the hard drive is recognized by Windows, the software works effectively in wiping your drive. MiniTool System Booster offers a user-friendly interface, making it easy for disk erasing and other optimization tasks. Why not give it a try?

Step 1: After installing MiniTool System Booster, launch it on your Windows 11/10 PC.

Step 2: Click Toolbox from the top menu and then tap on Drive Scrubber.

Step 3: Select the drive you want to wipe, specify a wipe method, and hit WIPE SELECTED DRIVE. Then, click OK to confirm.

#2. MiniTool Partition Wizard

Another DBAN alternative you should consider is MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free partition manager that handles your disks and partitions, such as formatting/deleting/resizing/extending/shrinking a partition, wiping an entire disk/a single partition, converting a disk from MBR and GPT, cloning a disk, etc.

Also read: A Comprehensive Guide on How to Zero Out Hard Drive

When it comes to wiping an HDD or SSD, it plays a crucial role since it supports multiple wiping methods, including using Zero, One, or Zero & One, the DoD 5520.22-M standard, and DoD 5520.28-STD. Additionally, the user interface is very intuitive. Without hesitation, get this alternative to DBAN for a trial.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 2: Locate the hard drive or a partition you need to erase, right-click on it, and choose Wipe Disk or Wipe Partition.

Step 3: Choose a wiping method and click OK > Apply.

#3. Diskpart

Aside from MiniTool products, you can use the DBAN alternative – the Diskpart command-line tool. This utility is built into Windows, allowing you to use it to delete a partition, create a partition, format a partition, and more. To erase a hard drive using it, execute the clean all command in Diskpart.

Step 1: Open Command Prompt with admin rights via the search box.

Step 2: Type Diskpart and hit Enter.

Step 3: Enter the following commands sequentially:

list disk

select disk n: n refers to the disk number

clean all

#4. Disk Management

Furthermore, Windows has another tool called Disk Management that can act as a DBAN alternative to wipe your drive. To erase the drive, you can use this utility to perform a full format that completely clears files and rebuilds the file system, volume label & cluster size. Data won't be recoverable after fully formatting the partition.

Also read: Quick Format VS Full Format (How to Choose For Data Security)

Step 1: Right-click on the Start button and choose Disk Management in Windows 11/10.

Step 2: Locate the drive you want to wipe, right-click on it, and choose Format.

Step 3: Untick Perform a quick format and click OK.

The Conclusion

This article presents the top four DBAN alternatives for you to wipe your drive on Windows 11/10. Choose one based on your needs to securely erase the entire disk or partition.

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