What’s DBAN & 4 DBAN Alternatives for SSD/HDD Erasing in Win11/10

About DBAN

Before moving to the part of the DBAN alternative, let’s have a general idea of this tool.

DBAN, short for Dariks Boot and Nuke, refers to free open-source software designed to securely erase your hard drive in PC laptops, desktops, or servers. In that way, all the disk data will be deleted permanently and no longer recoverable. Based on Linux, DBAN allows erasing your PATA (IDE), SCSI, and SATA hard drives. If you need to wipe your SSD, DBAN cannot help.

Note that DBAN is configured to automatically wipe every disk it sees by default if you don’t choose the target hard drive.

How to Use DBAN

DBAN requires you to only boot the PC from a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive to wipe your hard drive. Let’s see a stepwise guide.

Step 1: Visit the official website – https://dban.org/ and download DBAN ISO, then burn it to a USB flash drive or CD/DVD using Rufus.

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

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

Step 4: All the detected hard drives are listed here. Press J or K to scroll up or down and choose the disk you want to wipe, then hit Space to confirm the selection and you will see the word “wipe” at the beginning of the selected drive.

Step 5: Start the erasing process by pressing F10. Once finished, you will see the message “DBAN succeeded”.

Why Need a DBAN Alternative

DBAN is a good hard drive eraser for you, however, it has some limitations which inevitably cause you to search for “DBAN alternative” or “DBAN alternative for SSD” online.

• It only runs from a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD and performs the wiping operation in BIOS.
• There is no longer an update since June 2015, hence, no technical support is supported.
• DBAN can only wipe an HDD rather than an SSD.

Below, let’s see some alternatives to DBAN for SSDs & HDDs.

#1. MiniTool System Booster

As a piece of professional PC tune-up software, MiniTool System Booster devotes itself to optimizing the PC in various aspects, such as freezing up RAM, cleaning up the PC, improving CPU, uninstalling apps, and more.

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

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

MiniTool System Booster TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

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

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

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

How to Wipe a Computer in Windows 11/10? 4 Ways for You!

How to wipe a computer in Windows 11/10 before selling/recycling? Follow several ways here to securely erase your PC to avoid data leaks.

Read More

#2. MiniTool Partition Wizard

Another DBAN alternative you should consider is MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free partition manager that manages 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 Full Guide on How to Zero out Hard Drive

In terms of wiping an HDD or SSD, it plays an important 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. Also, the user interface is very intuitive. Without hesitation, get this alternative to DBAN for a trial.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Run 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.

How to Wipe a Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7? 3 Ways!

How to wipe a hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 before selling or donating it? 3 ways to scrub your hard disk can be found in this post.

Read More

#3. Diskpart

Apart from MiniTool products, you can run 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 run it for erasing a hard drive, use the clean all command in Diskpart.

Diskpart Force Delete Partition in Windows 11/10 – How to Do

This post offers an all-in-one guide on how to run Diskpart to force delete a partition, as well as an alternative to erase your drive.

Read More

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

Step 2: Type Diskpart and hit Enter.

Step 3: Execute the following commands in turn:

list disk

select disk n: n refers to the disk number

clean all

#4. Disk Management

In addition, Windows has another tool called Disk Management that can be a DBAN alternative to wipe your drive. In order to erase the drive, you can run 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 End

This post shows the top 4 DBAN alternatives to you for wiping your drive on Windows 11/10. Get one of them as per your need to securely erase the entire disk or partition.