Developer(s) Darik Horn Type Secure erase | Operating system | |
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Stable release 2.3.0 / June 4, 2015 (2015-06-04) | ||
Darik's Boot and Nuke, also known as DBAN /ˈdiːbæn/, is an open source project hosted on SourceForge. The program is designed to securely erase a hard disk until its data is permanently removed and no longer recoverable, which is achieved by overwriting the data with pseudorandom numbers generated by Mersenne twister or ISAAC. The Gutmann method, Quick Erase, DoD Short (3 passes), and DOD 5220.22-M (7 passes) are also included as options to handle data remanence. DBAN can be booted from a CD, DVD, USB flash drive or diskless using a Preboot Execution Environment. It is based on Linux and supports PATA (IDE), SCSI and SATA hard drives. DBAN can be configured to automatically wipe every hard disk that it sees on a system or entire network of systems, making it very useful for unattended data destruction scenarios. DBAN exists for x86 systems.
DBAN, like other methods of data erasure, is suitable for use prior to computer recycling for personal or commercial situations, such as donating or selling a computer.
Current status
In September 2012, Blancco of Finland announced its acquisition of DBAN.
There is an unofficial fork of DBAN that is actively maintained. The dwipe program that DBAN uses has been forked and is available as a standalone program called Nwipe, which is actively maintained.