Secure Harddrive deletion?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Comp01, Oct 11, 2003.

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  1. Comp01

    Comp01 Registered Member

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    I wanted to know, is there a reformatting program, that securely erases all data from your harddrive? I am getting a newer computer (One from a family member of mine) and want to make sure the HDD is completly clean, before installing all my stuff (Needless to say, they werent too swift on security, before they sent it to me, they found 4 viruses, and 1 trojan horse on the system) so, is there anything I can do beside just a normal win9x reformat?
     
  2. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Well, there are erasing products and I'm sure people will come by recommending their favorites, or you can search in this section or in the Privacy Software area using the search word "erase" to see what people have said before. And please note that I have nothing against erasing the entire disk surface, but, I do want to say this...

    "Secure erasing" is generally done as a protection against disk scavenging, which is the ability basically to un-delete files or recover file segments that were on the disk before being removed with a simple delete command. A delete command as you already seem to know simply removes the pointers to a file. It does not erase the file contents.

    But, if you don't intend to run software that specifically will search the unused sectors on the disk drive looking for files that can be recovered, then you don't need to worry about what they had on the system before you got it. Your first format command will take care of any of that stuff in terms of it being able to harm you in any way. It's just bits set to either 1 or 0 on the drive until you intentionally try to reform it into files.
     
  3. eyespy

    eyespy Registered Member

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    Location:
    Oh Canada !!
    If you really want to wipe your Hard Drive, try "Darik's Boot and Nuke".

    http://dban.sourceforge.net/

    regards,
    bill ;)
     
  4. Comp01

    Comp01 Registered Member

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    Is that program safe? and also, what version should I download of it? (Theres 1.01 and 1.02 available) I checked the reviews on CNET, 60% positive, 40% negative :-/
     
  5. FluxGFX

    FluxGFX Registered Member

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    Ottawa/Canada
    That's the thing here you cannot base your judgement on reviews of others ( CNET is not reliable ) most of the time the percentage you'll see is BIAS....
     
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