Alternatives to /format

[wxjunkie]

Does anyone know of software that will format a hdd to the extent that retrieval of information would be difficult? I'm about to sell some used hard drives and know that it's possible to retrieve such info from the drive even after it's been formatted.

 

[Noriaki]

Partion Magic Pro has a utitliy called "thrash" I think that will ruin a partition, so you can't retrieve data from it.

I'm not sure if PM regular has this or not.

 

[LarryJoe]

A low level format is what you need to do. Maxtor has a utility for this.

LJ

 

[Topochicho]

most undelete programs don't actually search the drive. they search the fat table. If you remove the partition and repartition it using a different format (NTFS) this should kill the fat table pretty well. This won't stop dedicated people but it will stop the casual undelete. For total kill you will need to purchase a program that will write trash to the disk and overwrite the actual files.

Edit:LarryJoe slid his in before mine, but his suggestion will also work

 

[Danlz]

Freeware: bcwipe

 

[GTaudiophile]

What about using a program like Norton's WipeInfo? It allows you to erase files, folders, or free space using either a "fast wipe" or a government wipe. I think the government wipe gives you the option of writing all 0s or all 1s and 0s to the selected file, folder, or free space. You also have the option for the process to be repeated several times.

Let's say I wanted to erase a bunch of files (like 100MBs) containing sensitive information for the company I work for. Would this be a sure way to permanently delete the files: 1) Send all the files to the Recycle Bin, 2) Empty the Bin, 3)Run Norton WipInfo, and 4)Run the government wipe on my harddrive's free space 2-3 times.

What do you think?

 

[LarryJoe]

Wow, all of these other ideas sound like an awful lot of work to completely wipe a hard drive. I am telling you, there is no better way than a Low Level Format. There will be NOTHING left on the drive. It runs from dos and takes about the same amount of time as a regular format. Go over to Maxtor and download it. I believe it is called llfutil.exe.

LJ

 

[GTaudiophile]

Might want to check out this site before getting that software. According to Maxtor, those programs are designed for specific harddrives.

http://www.maxtor.com/Softwaredownload/utilities.html

 

[pm]

It all has to do with your level of paranoia.

Delete erases the first character entry in the file allocation table. This is easily unerasable.

Format erases the file allocation table completely. The files still exist, but they are a lot harder to recover because you need to recreate the FAT completely.

Wipeinfo does an erase, then a rewrite of garbage, and then an erase. The 'government' version does this multiple times (5?) because a dedicated effort to recover data from a disk can recover data that's been overwritten (don't ask me how).

A low-level format can be either destructive or non-destructive. If you are trying to completely kill information, you want the destructive. This tries to repeatedly write a zero and then a one to a spot on the disk and then read that value back. It's intended to be used to find bad sectors. The non-destructive version copies the original data to another part of the disk and then moves it back afterwards. This is a very easy, reasonably fast and pretty secure. The goverment could probably get the data back if the case were important enough, but the average person wouldn't have a chance.

 

[wxjunkie]

I found an app called wipe pro, it's a freeware proggie with a number of different types of hdd erasing. I just used the fastest because it's not that big of a deal. I believe when using all of the options there are a total of 47 passes which takes around 8 hours on a 12 gig disk. Even with a 1ghz Tbird. A little extreme,

 

[Howard]

Couldn't you just swipe it with a powerful magnet?