DBAN Help Center

Can I start DBAN from DOS or a compilation?
Yes.

The best way to start DBAN from DOS is with the LOADLIN program. (The link points to our mirror.)

Copy the kernel.bzi and initrd.gz files from the DBAN floppy disk to a DOS filesystem and run this command:

loadlin kernel.bzi initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/ram0 init=/rc nuke="dwipe"

You can put this command in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Do not change the forward-slash characters to back-slash characters. Note that DBAN cannot return to DOS.

LOADLIN alternatives are Syslinux and GRUB.

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How do I make a bootable CD or bootable DVD with the ISO file?
We recommend CDBurnerXP for burning the DBAN boot media. Read the CDBurnerXP ISO burning tutorial for step-by-step instructions.

Almost every burning program will burn the DBAN boot media correctly with default burning options. Just double-click the ISO file.

We will ask that you try CDBurnerXP if you have any problems with CD-R or DVD-R boot media. You can get help from us for CDBurnerXP, but we don’t usually provide support for other products.

CD-ROM drives manufactured before 1999 cannot reliably read burned media.

DBAN has been burned incorrectly if you see just one file on the drive when you open the CD-R or DVD-R in My Computer or Windows Explorer.

DBAN may not boot if you modify the ISO file or filesystem layout in any way, like by injecting files. Any change to the syslinux.cfg file requires ISO remastering.

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Why doesn’t the EXE file fit on a floppy disk?
Download the dban-1.0.7_i386.exe file to your desktop and double-click it. This program will install DBAN to a floppy disk or USB flash device; it will not wipe the computer on which it is run.

You cannot install DBAN by copying or unpacking the EXE file to a blank floppy disk or other media.

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Why doesn’t the ZIP file or its contents fit on a floppy disk?
The ZIP file contains the ISO file or the installer EXE file. You must unzip this file and run the EXE file, or burn the ISO file to blank CD-R or DVD-R media.

You cannot install DBAN by copying or unpacking the ZIP file to a blank floppy disk or other media.

How do I get the dmesg? I suspect a driver problem or bad hardware.

Use “verbose” at the boot prompt.

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How do I start the computer with the DBAN media? It just boots from the hard disk.

Change the “boot order” of the computer.

Run the BIOS setup program and put the floppy drive and ROM drive first in the boot order. Do this by pushing ESC, Delete, F1 or F2 when you power-on the computer. The correct button varies between computers. Watch for a prompt when you power-on the computer or consult the motherboard documentation.

Some computers will ask for a password before running the BIOS setup program. You can usually defeat this check by opening the case and removing the “CMOS cell” from the motherboard, which looks like a large round watch battery.

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Why does DBAN hang when it tries to detect the floppy? I have a laptop computer.

The laptop computer is not connected to the docking station or to the external floppy drive.

Start DBAN at the boot prompt with this command:

boot: nofloppy

Alternatively:

• Disable the floppy drive with the BIOS setup program.
• Attach a floppy drive.

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Why does the floppy version of DBAN lock-up or print junk after I push enter at the boot prompt?

The floppy disk is bad. Use another.

The floppy media must be in perfect condition to reliably start DBAN.

Will DBAN work properly if my BIOS is old or broken?
Yes.

DBAN will still work properly if your BIOS does not detect all of the hard disks in your computer, or if your BIOS has disk size limitations. The BIOS need only be capable of starting DBAN from the boot media.

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Does DBAN wipe remapped sectors?
Use the ATA-6 wipe method if you want to wipe remapped sectors. Most methods do not wipe remapped sectors.

However, there are other erasure solutions that have the capability to detect, report and overwrite locked and hidden sectors such as HPA, DCO, and remapped sectors.

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Does DBAN wipe the Host Protected Area (“HPA”)?
No.

Most vendors that are using the HPA have a toggle for it in the BIOS setup program. Future releases of DBAN may override or dishonor the HPA.

However, there are other erasure solutions that have the capability to detect, report and overwrite locked and hidden sectors such as HPA, DCO, and remapped sectors.

Why not now and why not by default?

Some vendors are using the HPA instead of providing rescue media.

Wiping the HPA would surprise and strand people that expect the HPA to have rescue materials, and it often results in OEM technical support marking and abandoning people that do it. The HPA is a low risk because it is not accessible during normal operations.

DBAN defaults are chosen to best protect people with a minimal understanding of this kind of problem. This point is still open for discussion in the help forum and in the appropriate bug ticket.

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How do I add drivers to DBAN?
You can’t.

Open a bug report for the incompatible target computer and provide manufacturer and model information for the hardware.

Drivers for Microsoft Windows are incompatible with DBAN.

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How many disks can DBAN wipe concurrently?
100.

DBAN has been run on a computer with 100 SCSI hard disks. There are no artificial limits in DBAN, but PCI bus bandwidth is usually the limiting factor in practical application.

Most desktop computers will have a performance sweet-spot of four disks.

If you are building an appliance to wipe loose disks, then the most important component is a motherboard with multiple PCI buses. CPU speed and memory size are unimportant.

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Is it supposed to take that much time?
Yes.

With default options, a typical runtime on a typical disk is three or four hours, but performance varies greatly between drive and controller combinations.

DBAN fully uses all I/O capacity on most computers. There is no way to reduce wipe time and still fully wipe the media. Similar products may appear to run faster than DBAN because they silently fail at BIOS addressing limits, or because they just do a firmware lock.

You can purchase a database of performance statistics from us to plan your consulting job.

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Why could DBAN be slow?
The usual reasons for DBAN being slow are:

1. Bad hardware. DBAN will degrade to PIO mode after a DMA fault and try to finish the wipe. The estimated runtime will get very large very quickly in this case.
2. Old drivers. Try the latest posted beta or pre-release if the target computer was manufactured in the last six months.
3. DBAN is alway 20% slower than a similar product. You are comparing DBAN against a similar product that cheats on the DoD implementation by “randomly” choosing the null byte on the final character pass.

Looking for the fastest possible erasure solution in the industry?

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Why doesn’t DBAN detect the disks in a RAID array?
DBAN has drivers for most RAID implementations, but DBAN does not automatically disassemble RAID volumes.

The operator must manually disassemble RAID volumes and put each component into “JBOD” or “SINGLE” mode for the disks to be recognized by DBAN. For Adaptec AIC-7902 and IBM ServeRAID host controllers, the operator can do this by running the SCSI BIOS Setup Program and disabling the “HostRaid” toggle.

This procedure varies between RAID implementations.

For alternative erasure software that has extensive hardware support, including pass-through and dismantling for RAID array.

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Will DBAN work with my offboard IDE or IDE-RAID controller?
Yes.

Note, however, that most IDE-RAID devices are not really hardware implementations. DBAN accesses these devices as regular IDE controllers.

Are you absolutely sure that DBAN works properly?
No.

There are several situations in which a DBAN failure could go unnoticed:

• DBAN may fail to detect a hard disk in a computer with many hard disks. You must check whether DBAN actually detected all hard disks in a computer.
• Your hardware caches writes or otherwise does not implement a functional write barrier. This is likely to happen with battery-backed large-memory RAID controllers or defective hard disks.
• Somebody with a lot of time, money, and brains needs to recover your data.
• The software that you downloaded could be bugged or trojaned. (Did you check the PGP signature?)

Users should be aware that there are professional wiping solutions that do guarantee 100% data sanitization of all your IT assets. These solutions are completely secure and well trusted. Once erased, the data cannot be recovered with any existing technology.

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Does DBAN wipe encrypted files?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the NTFS metadata?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the browser history?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the cookie store?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the empty spaces between files?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the index.dat file?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the registry?
Yes.

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Does DBAN wipe the swap file?
Yes.

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Is the Gutmann method the best method?
No.

Most of the passes in the Gutmann wipe are designed to flip the bits in MFM/RLL encoded disks, which is an encoding that modern hard disks do not use.

In a followup to his paper, Gutmann said that it is unnecessary to run those passes because you cannot be reasonably certain about how a modern hard disk stores data on the platter. If the encoding is unknown, then writing random patterns is your best strategy.

In particular, Gutmann says that “in the time since this paper was published, some people have treated the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a technical analysis of drive encoding techniques. As a result, they advocate applying the voodoo to PRML and EPRML drives even though it will have no more effect than a simple scrubbing with random data… For any modern PRML/EPRML drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do”.

Read these papers by Peter Gutmann:

• Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory
• Data Remanence in Semiconductor Devices

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What is the difference between the DBAN image in the EXE file and in the ISO file?
There is no difference.

The mkisofs utility is used to generate the ISO file directly from the contents of the EXE file. The IMA file is booted from the cdrom with floppy disk emulation.

Does DBAN conform to my favorite certification or fulfill my local regulatory requirements?
(HIPAA, NIST, Sorbanes-Oxley, PIPEDA?)

We will not issue a statement of conformity for DBAN because it would be construed as a warranty or promise.

Certifications: For alternative wiping solutions that conform to multiple national and international third party approvals, certifications and recommendations.

Regulatory Compliance: Data security mandates such as ISO 27001, ISO 15408, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX and European Union Directives require secure data removal. There are alternative wiping solutions that ensure regulatory compliance in private and public sectors with extensive data destruction, reporting and auditing capabilities.

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Does DBAN have my favorite certification?
No.

For alternative wiping solutions that conform to multiple national and international third party approvals, certifications and recommendations.

Why did my C: drive disappear?
DBAN erases the partition table, which causes all drive letters to disappear.

The Microsoft Windows installer will automatically create a partition and filesystem during installation. Using FDISK after running DBAN is usually unnecessary.

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Why did my large hard disk shrink to 137GB (128 GiB) after running DBAN?
The Microsoft Windows installation media that you are using only has ATA-5 support, which has a 128 gigabyte limit.

The operating system installer must have ATA-6 support to use all of a disk that is larger than 128 gigabytes. The solution is to reinstall with Windows 2000 SP4 media or Windows XP SP1 media.

Alternatively, you can install to a 128 gig partition, apply the service pack that provides 48-bit LBA, and then enlarge the filesystem afterwards.

Microsoft documents the issue in KB305098 for Windows 2000 and KB303013 for Windows XP.

Seagate gives the issue full treatment in their Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier document.

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Why does my computer start into a black screen after using DBAN?
You must reinstall an operating system because DBAN removes it.

Many computers will complain about the “Operating System Not Found”, but some computers will just POST into a black screen.

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Why does the device manager have yellow and red icons after using DBAN?
You must reinstall drivers for this hardware after reinstalling the operating system. These drivers were factory installed, but they may not be on the Microsoft Windows installation or rescue media. All major computer manufacturers provide drivers for Microsoft Windows on their web sites.

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Why is my video resolution low after using DBAN?
You must reinstall drivers for this hardware after reinstalling the operating system. These drivers were factory installed, but they may not be on the Microsoft Windows installation or rescue media. All major computer manufacturers provide drivers for Microsoft Windows on their web sites.

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Why is sound broken after using DBAN?
You must reinstall drivers for this hardware after reinstalling the operating system. These drivers were factory installed, but they may not be on the Microsoft Windows installation or rescue media. All major computer manufacturers provide drivers for Microsoft Windows on their web sites.

May I bundle DBAN with a magazine or in a compilation disc?
Yes.

If you are publishing a magazine, then please send us a copy. We’ll give you a nice link in return.

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May I rebrand DBAN?
No.

If you rebrand DBAN without our permission, then we will send an unadulterated copy of DBAN to your customers and submit a GPL fulfillment demand to your legal department.

An auditor will eventually notice if you sell a misrepresented unauthorized product into a large company.

Read the following link, which provides more information about how DBAN is licensed. We pursue GPL violators.

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May I use DBAN in my consulting business?
No. It is recommended for home use only.