Does DBAN Make a Drive Un-reusable?

I heard that a disk is reusable just after being wiped with DBAN. Just to make sure, is this true? Will I be able to use it again just as easily if I ran the autonuke command on it?

I don't care about my files because they're all backed up, but I want to make sure I can reuse my HDD because I'm not interested in having to buy another one for a stupid mistake.

Cheers.

DBAN will make the data unusable. You should still be able to partition and format the drive to use it again.

DBAN might, on a drive that is already very close to failure, provoke the final death throes and make a drive completely unusable, but that drive would have to have been pretty much nearly dead already.

By design DBAN is supposed to destroy the data, not the drive.

However, some of the more overzealous erasure modes of DBAN overwrite every single bit on the drive multiple times with multiple different values. For example, the "gutmann" mode will do 35(!) overwrites of every single bit. This kind of abuse is not how drives are usually used and can reduce the lifetime of the disk considerably.

And you probably don't need to do that anyway. For most scenarios, a single overwrite with zeroes ("quick" mode) is more than enough. That is all that is needed to make sure that no data can be restored via software methods.

More overwrites are only required to foil forensic methods which go for the hardware. For example, if you believe that someone might go so far as to disassembles your drive in a lab and examine it with an electron microscope cell-by-cell. Which is far too impractical and unreliable for anyone who doesn't expect to find some very important data on your drive (matter of national security, millions of bitcoins, etc). And if you indeed face adversaries which are able and willing to invest that many resources into restoring data from your hard drive, then 3 overwrites with random data ("dodshort") should suffice to foil their dastardly plan of villainy.

Unless you're worried about a future owner of the drive being able to access your old data, you don't need to nuke it at all.
Just reformat if it's still for your own use.

It doesn't destroy the drive, but it does cause unnecessary wear, take a long time, and waste CPU cycles and energy.

Your drive already has the in-built ability to permanently wipe all data: ATA Secure Erase.

There are a lot of ways to issue this command.  Google "PArted MAgic" (not sure but you might have to pay for that now).

Try this: GParted Live on USB:

... download and install Unetbootin on your MS Windows computer.  Download the GParted Live iso file.  From Windows, run the Unetbootin program and follow the instructions in the GUI to install GParted Live on your USB flash drive.

then Advanced: Erasing SATA Drives by using the Linux hdparm Utility - GROK Knowledge Base:
^{[See the linked article for screenshots.]}

How to Issue the Secure Erase Command

1. Download and burn a Linux LiveCD that includes the hdparm utility.  CentOS 6.3 LiveCD DOES contain hdparm, however the Fedora 17 LiveCD DOES NOT, so your mileage will vary.

2. Attach the drive(s) to be erased and boot the computer up from the Linux LiveCD, and get to a root shell.  All commands from now on will be issued as root.

3. Find the name of the drive(s) that you want to wipe by using the fdisk command:

   fdisk -l
   

   NOTE: For this example, we will be using /dev/sda.

4. Check to see if the drive is frozen:

   hdparm -I /dev/sda
   

   NOTE: The drive is frozen, it supports Enhanced Security Erasing, and the estimated completion time is 50 minutes.

5. Since the drive in this example is frozen, we need to unfreeze it but putting the computer to sleep with the command below. Skip this step if your drive is not frozen.

   echo -n mem > /sys/power/state
   

6. After letting the computer sleep for a few seconds, wake it up and check to see if the drive is no longer in frozen state by issuing the command:

   hdparm -I /dev/sda
   

   NOTE: The drive is no longer in frozen state.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 if the drive is still frozen. Otherwise, set a temporary password "p" in order to issue the secure erase command:

   hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass p /dev/sda
   

8. Check to see if the password is set correctly and that security is now enabled:

   hdparm -I /dev/sda
   

9. Erase the drive:

   If the drive DOES support Enhanced Security Erase:

   hdparm --user-master u --security-erase-enhanced p /dev/sda
   

   If NOT:

   hdparm --user-master u --security-erase p /dev/sda
   

Warning:  ALL data on the drive will be erased and will not be recoverable.  Please backup all necessary data ahead of time.

10. After waiting at least the estimated amount of time as shown by hdparm output (step 4), check to see if the security erase command is finished.

   hdparm -I /dev/sda

11. We recommend verifying that secure erase actually worked by reading the first few MBs of the disk.

   dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M count=5

If dd outputs nothing to the screen, it's reasonably safe to assume that the disk has been wiped. *Note: If enhanced security was chosen, there may be a randomized output.