Topic: Cleaning a hard drive

[Simon]

There has been a lot of talk around the fact that even formatting a hard drive does not fully delete the data contained on it, and that said data could quite easily be recovered by sombody with the right tools.

I will be thinking of updating my computer, probably next year, if not sooner, and may want to sell my old one, as a working unit.  How, then, could I be certain that data, such as credit card or banking details, personal and business accounts, etc, would not be recoverable from my old hard drive, should I pass it along to another user?

[Adept]

What you need is something like DriveScrubber Simon.

It's shareware I'm afraid. There's probably some freeware available to do the same job though. Try Googling "secure wipe software"

[Simon]

OK, well shareware might be OK, as it would only be for a one off use, wouldn't it?  I'll keep that in mind, thanks Sean.

[gudda96]

Simon

My first visit so if I have not copied link correctly, will try again..

Active@ KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful and compact DOS software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.

If you use FDISK, FORMAT utilities, or DELETE standard operating system command for data removal, there is always a chance to recover deleted data (using undelete file or some data recovery software) and use against the owner's will. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody.

Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. The most secure Gutmann's data destruction method is also implemented. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever.

Let me know if any good

[measter]

if you got partition magic 8 it's got a secure format option.

[Tony]

Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M.

Meaning your data is in the true sense "still recoverable That's because the "powers that be" always want the capacity to be able to recover your data hence all data scrubbing applications have to conform to DoD standards.

That said, for selling your HDD onto Joe Bloggs, using one of the approved data scrubbers will be fine.

[Simon]

Thanks, gudda96, and  

As I said, this is for future reference, so don't expect a report too soon!  

[daveeb]

don't think you use use norton 2003 simon but for what its worth it has a d.o.d standard file shredder tool.

[Reno]

won't reparticianing wipe the disk, i was under the impressions that if it would wipe a virus infection it would wipe everything else. Its all ones and zeros right?

i went looking for open source file shredders. heres a link http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

heres a link of a list of win32 open source apps
http://www.jairlie.com/oss/suggestedapplications.html#file

enjoy

[Simon]

Thanks all.  I'll come back to this when the time comes.  

[ketamininja]

Yep.

When you format your HDD, you only delete the "table of contents". All the "data" is still on the HDD, just the computer (Windows) doesn't know coz it only looks at the TOC.

If you do a LOW LEVEL FORMAT or ZERO FILL (as we call it these days), this simply writes ZERO's to the HDD, therefore DELETING ALL DATA.

Download the tool from your HDD MANUFACTURERS WEBSITE - ie, got a 20GB Maxtor... then get maxtors tool. That is the safest way - I would never recommend using software that is not made by your HDD man.