completely erase hard drive

[larremore]

before a computer is sold, how would the hard drive be completely erased? ive been told just re-formatting will not completely erase all files. is there a program, or process that will?

[smaier69]

low-level format.
sets up whats's called "interleave factor" and sets up the drive to work with a cetrain controller. some scsi host adapters can perofrm this (option is usually in the SCSI adapter's BIOS). you cant do a low-level format with FDISK... you would need to had special equipment/software to do it, though.

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"Those who fail to recognize the past are condemned to relive it"

-Jim Jones

[larremore]

i was watching techtv a while back. they spoke of this subject. the guy talked of a program available on the internet that would perform this task. know anything of these programs? he gave a website where to get it, however i couldnt access it. forgot what it was now.

[rbrescia]

hey larremore, as everyone has said you have to do a low-level format which is basically writing zero's to your hard drive. Fortunately I have a Gateway and they include this program on disk. If you contact your drive manufacturer they will be able to provide you with the appropriate software.

[bug]

format c: /u
what have you gto on that HD that you feel someone is gonna try to retreive?

[tolken]

Best way to wipe the drive is to FDISK it and
then Run an unconditional format on it.

format /u

[keeper]

Larremore; Have done this a few times. Seems all the info you need is here. After Reformatting, load progs on HDD.

Load the HDD to a little more than you have now.

Then delete the ones you don't want to send away with your PC.

This 'over-writing' should wax your data well enough.

If your PC is like mine, there isn't much in there that anyone would care about.

If you happen to have Very sensitive data on your HDD, then just replace it and add the old HDD to your new PC.

A Hard Disk Drive can never be 100% wiped, but the equip needed to recover an over-written HDD is Very expensive.

Also, there is a program calld 'Eraser' [freeware] it uses the U.S. Gov't Standard of 35 wipes + over-writes.

Don't forget to run your 'sysedit' and 'regedit' first.[be careful in there].

You can get 'Eraser' at www.tolvanen.com/eraser/ (http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/)

After this and the postings above, your HDD will be wiped.

[Dimwit]

Jetico makes a program called "BCWipe" that allows you to erase files the way the D.O.D. erases files. It writes over the file to be deleted up to 7 times (user definable) to remove the chance of someone reading your old data. It also will wipe free space, so I think it would be a good way to erase a disk before resale.
You can get more info and download a shareware vrsion @ http://www.bcwipe.com



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Rack The Trolls

[This message has been edited by Dimwit (edited 12-18-2000).]

[Humboldt]

It all depends on how sensitive the data is. If you're really worried about it, I think the best option is to replace the HDD altogether like someone else recommended. Even after you use a program to delete data or reformatt the drive, someone else wih ANOTHER program can always recover the data. There are specialists that charge a butt-load of money to do it, but they can recover data from burnt drives, water-logged drives, smashed drives, and especially re-written drives, even those that have been "wiped clean" to DOD standards.

[Scoot]

Evidence Eliminator™

[korupt]

Killer little tool for cleaning a hard drive to the shiny, delpart. Be carefull with this one!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://thefirstsource.com/students/

look for delpart.exe - http://www.speedguide.net/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.speedguide.net/ubb/biggrin.gif



[This message has been edited by korupt (edited 12-22-2000).]

[scsi_guru]

What about the dos degug.exe command found on the Win98 startup disk? Will this not be effective enough??