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I ran DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) on my notebook. When it finished, it showed a message saying "press any key to continue". When I pressed a key, I got an advertisement page, and then it stopped.

Has my hard disk been wiped completely?

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The advert was added when the rights to dban were purchased by Blancco‌​. There were no other changes‌​. –  Colin Pickard May 3 '13 at 12:19
@ColinPickard Thanks!!. I'd like to ask u something. If I run 8 pass and then I run 1 pass again. My harddisk has security as 1 pass?(because it's last). I'm afraid 8 pass that i ran before is wasteful. –  Napat Maipaiboon May 3 '13 at 12:30
If you think its wasteful run it less thats entirely your choice. –  Ramhound May 3 '13 at 12:42
@Ramhound First I ran it 8 pass.when it finished,I get an advertisement page and then it stops. I think it's ploblem,so I run it again with 1 pass. I'm afraid security that I ran 8 pass is lost –  Napat Maipaiboon May 3 '13 at 12:45
@Napat Maipaiboon - If you ran it 8 times then ran it 1 times, you ran it, 9 times in total. You do understand what the application does right? –  Ramhound May 3 '13 at 12:55

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Yes, it's wiped completely. I don't remember that it had an advertisement. Since the last time I used it, maybe they changed something because it's free.

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Thanks. I would like to ask something.If I run dban 8 pass,can I run it again??. –  Napat Maipaiboon May 3 '13 at 11:46
U boot it from a usb drive or? If its still avaible on the drive then u can run it again. If i answered ur question, mark my answer as answer please :) –  The All Seeing Eye May 3 '13 at 11:48

The accepted answer is correct.

However, to throw some more light on the problem, I remark that DBAN was purchased by Blancco in 2010, which is when the ad was added.

An examination of the SourceForge DBAN page shows that the ad was added in version 2.2.6 and also that some useful development was done at that time of beginning 2012.

As no development was done since beginning 2012, it might be worthwhile to look for an alternative product.

DBAN itself is criticized in the article Securely Erase A Hard Drive – DBAN May Not Be Sufficient as not actually wiping the entire disk.

You could have a look at the article Best Free Hard Drive Eraser, where the winner is Eraser, but other products are also recommended (it's also advisable to read the comments).

I remark that the dwipe program that DBAN uses has been forked and is available as a standalone program called Nwipe, included with partedmagic (if you want a bootable CD version).

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