I was recently contacted by Stellar Data Recovery to evaluate their BitRaser product. BitRaser is a certified data erasure utility. I received an Enterprise Edition ten count at no cost to me.
A USB flash drive, quick start guide, and CD-ROM was included. You can boot off a USB flash drive and erase local hard drives. The CD-ROM includes software that allows you to manage erasure over a network.
You need Windows Server 2008 release two or Windows Server 2012.Both x86 32 bit and x64 64 bit are supported. You can erase data from personal computers, laptops, servers, and even storage environments.
BitRaser boasts an ability to erase up to sixty five thousand drives at once. IDE, PATA, SATA, SSD, SAS, SCSI, and USB drives can be erased. There are twenty four erasure standards supported.
This software supports both BIOS and UEFI devices. You can customize an erasure. You can boot off a USB flash drive or remotely. Erasure reports can be saved in HTML, PDF, and XML formats.
The following erasure standards are supported:
* NIST Clear
* NIST ATA Purge
* United States DOD 5220.22-M
* United States DOD 5200.22-M ECE
* United States DOD 5200.28-STD
* Russian GOST-R-50739-95
* B.Schneier algorithm
* German VSITR
* Peter Gutmann
* United States Army AR 380-19
* NATO
* United States Air Force AFSSI 5020
* Pfitzner algorithm
* Canadian RCMP TSSIT OPS-2
* British HMG IS5
* Zeroes
* Pseudo-random
* Pseudo-random plus zeroes
* Random Zero
* Five custom algorithms
I erased a few computer hard drives via a USB flash drive. I did not erase any drives using an included server version. One item I noticed is that this software loads a 32 bit version of Windows 7 graphical user interface.
Also, first time you use this software you must enter information of person performing this erasure. This information is mandatory. There is a “Don’t ask me again” check box.
However, you must enter in some mandatory information at least once. I was not able to get around this pop up window.