Top 3 Reliable DBAN Alternatives to Completely Wipe Hard Drive

What is DBAN?

DBAN, also known as Dariks Boot and Nuke, is a free and open-source data removal software, commonly used when you wipe a hard drive for reuse, donation, or selling. It’s designed to delete all data including programs, personal files, recovery partition, and operating system on a selected hard drive. If you don’t select it, it will erase all disks on your computer.

It cannot run when the operating system is in use, so you can only boot from a bootable USB or CD/DVD to wipe a hard drive. It’s a self-contained boot disk, just download its ISO image from the official site and burn it to a supported device.

How to use Dariks Boot and Nuke to wipe a hard drive

Since Dariks Boot and Nuke only work while wiping the hard drive from BIOS, you need to prepare a USB so as to create a DBAN bootable USB. Then, see the steps below.

Step 1. Go to DBAN's official site to download its ISO image files and then burn it to USB.

Note:✎...

To be safe, you need to remove all the devices you don’t want to erase. It does not remind you which hard drive to wipe nor prompt you for any confirmations.

Step 2. Go to BIOS and set the DBAN bootable USB as the first boot option. Then, restart from this device.

Step 3. Wait for a while, you will see Dariks Boot and Nuke blue screen. You have many choices, press the displayed function keys to to learn more about DBAN, or directly press Enter to start the disk wiping process.

Step 4. In the next window, you will see all the detected hard drives and several options at the bottom. Type M to learn about the disk wiping method.

Step 5. In the Wipe Method section, press "J" or "K" to scroll up or down and learn about the disk wipe methods. After that, select which method you want to use and press the Space key to confirm.

Step 6. Select the drive you want to wipe and press the Space key to confirm. Then, you will see a “wipe” word at the beginning of the selected box.

Step 7. Press 10 to start the erasure process. After you see the green words “DBAN succeeded”, it means the disk wipe process is complete successfully.

Why need DBAN boot and nuke alternative?

As a matter of fact, DBAN is a very useful hard drive eraser, but it still has some limitations, which inevitably leads many users to search “DBAN alternative”, “DBAN alternative HDD”, “DBAN alternative free”, etc. To be specific:

It only works for wiping hard drives from BIOS using bootable USB or CD/DVD, even if you wipe an external hard drive.

The disk wipe process is realized by quick commands, which makes many users find it difficult to operate. The erasure process does not have any confirmation, greatly increasing the data loss risk.

In addition, this software is no longer updated since June 2015, and some users report that the compatibility is in decline.

Then, which is a better alternative for DBAN? If you want a command-line tool, diskpart clean all commands can be a great choice. If you want an easier way, You could use Disk Management or AOMEI Backupper. Among them, AOMEI Backupper is the easiest way.

How to wipe HDD with DBAN alternative in Windows 10/11

Here you will learn 3 methods mentioned earlier, they are free DBAN alternatives, which can satisfy different users’ needs.

• To wipe the entire disk completely, you can use Method 1 or Method 3.
• For specific partitions or unallocated space, you can use Method 2 or Method 3.
• To wipe the hard drive without booting into Windows, you can use Method 3.

Method 1: Wipe a hard drive with a free DBAN alternative - Diskpart

Diskpart is a command-line disk partition utility for Windows systems, and you can use it to create a partition, delete a partition, merge a partition, etc. To delete all data on a hard drive, you can use diskpart to clean all commands with the following steps.

Step 1. Type cmd in the search box and select Run as administrator.

Step 2. Wait for a while, you will see the black command prompt window, type the following commands and then press Enter in order.

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk x (x is the number of the disk you want to clean.)
• clean all

Step 3. Type exit to leave this window.

Method 2: Format hard drive with DBAN alternative for HDD - Disk Management

Disk management is a built-in disk partition manager, which allows you to format hard drives, extend volume, shrink volume, delete volume, etc. In order to wipe a hard drive, you need to use its Format option, please follow the steps below.

Step 1. Press Win + R to summon the Run window, type diskmgmt.msc, and hit Enter to open Disk Management.

Step 2. In the Disk Management window, right-click the volume on the hard drive you want to wipe and select Format... to continue.

Step 3. Here you will see a pop-up window like Format F:, select file system, and uncheck Perform a quick format option. Then, click OK.

Step 4. You will be told that formatting this volume will erase all data on it and if you want to keep this operation, type OK.

That’s the entire process of formatting a volume, to delete all the volumes on the hard drive, you need to repeat Step 2 - Step 4 until all the volumes are formatted. It’s annoying and really a waste of time. If you think so too, you could try the best DBAN alternative - AOMEI Backupper.

Method 3: Erase the hard drive with DBAN alternative- AOMEI Backupper

AOMEI Backupper Professional is a reliable backup software to help you continuously protect data while coming along with many useful tools, today we will use a disk wipe tool.

You can decide what to wipe, the entire disk, or specific partitions or unallocated space, and how to wipe a hard drive, using fill sectors with Zero, fill sectors with random data, DoD 52220.22-M, Gutmann.

To clean a hard drive, you need to download this software and install it on your computer. Then, connect the hard drive you want to erase and be sure it’s recognized by Windows.

Note:✎...

If you want to wipe the hard drive without booting into Windows, you need to create a bootable USB with this software and then boot from it. And all the other steps are the same, you can follow the stepwise guide below.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Backupper, go to Tools, and then select Disk Wipe.

Step 2. In the wiping type window, you have two options, one is to Wipe selected partitions & unallocated space on the disk, and the other one is to wipe the disk. To delete the entire disk, select Wipe disk and click Next.

Step 3. Select the hard drive you want to wipe and click Next.

Step 4. In the wiping method window, select Fill sectors with zero and click Start. If the disk you are wiping is a system disk, your computer will restart to PE mode and perform this process.

Other disk wiping methods you can use:

• Fill sectors with random data: Compared with zero, random data will be much more difficult to retrieve due to its uncertainty.
• DoD 52220.22-M: This method allows you to specify rewrite times, up to 7 passes.
• Gutmann: As its name shows, this method will be a potent medicine, that makes data recovery almost impossible. The rewrite times are up to 35 passes.

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If you have any further questions, you can click the Help icon or contact us via [email protected].

FAQs on Dariks Boot and Nuke

1. Is DBAN safe to use?

It’s difficult to say if DBAN is safe or not. It’s based on a bootable drive and keyboard to wipe the hard drive from BIOS, and the disk wiping process does not have any prompts or confirmation.

2. Is DBAN still good?

It’s a great choice for you to completely wipe a hard drive, but some users report that compatibility of it is in decline, it does not support some newer hardware, for example, since it hasn't been updated since 2015.

3. What is better than DBAN?

Owning to DBAN’s limitations, you may want a better DBAN alternative, there are multiple choices, such as diskpart clean all commands, disk management full format, third-party tools like AOMEI Backupper, etc., choose it per your needs.

4. Can DBAN wipe an SSD?

DBAN does not wipe the SSD disk, because it’s designed for a traditional hard drive. If you need to erase an SSD, you can try Diskpart, Disk Management, or a third-party partition manager like AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Your choice 

In this article, you will get 3 DBAN alternatives, which one is your better choice? Simple command line tool or GUI-based software, my choice is using powerful backup software AOMEI Backupper Professional to wipe a hard drive.

After disk wiping, I still can use it to backup my data so as to protect it continuously, it can be personal files, documents, music, videos, etc, or data on a specific partition(eg: system drive) or an entire disk.