By Robert Vamosi, CNET.com on 07 May 2007 11:59 AM
Tags: partitionmagic, norton, symantec, software, drive, hard drive
Check ATA Secure Erase as per our ACSI 33, there is only one company in Australia that does commercialize this kind of products ( Consulvest), they have true ATA/PATA/IDE and SATA Secure Erase products (not only regular commercial overwritting software that uses software applications to overwrite a disk and have their well known issues). Secure Erase is a native command of ATA specs, therefore making the "Secure Erase" name for this product misleading. The Australian Government has updated their security manual last september to recognize the drive´s firmware SE command. As far as my knowledge goes, there are only 2 products in the world that runs this internal drive command with success, they are the Digital Shredder and the CPR Hammer. have a look at consulvest.com.au or contact those guys to get clarification on differences among wiping technologies.
The good: Symantec is a known brand and good for the partitioning job.
The bad: This product does not employ the most secure wiping method and will never do due the restrictions native ATA Secure erase imposes to hardware BIOS or operating systems. It is not so simple to run Secure erase from the hard drive´s firmware.
If you need to partition your live hard drive, Norton PartitionMagic 8 is still the application to beat.
RRP: AU$119.95
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Still does a good job and relatively easy to use but an Open Source Tool - GParted is just as graphical, nearly as easy to use, possibly a little faster (subjective judgement only), comes in Live CD and USB Versions and best of all it's free :)