Free, free space shredder....

[Gooberlx2]

My Dad is giving away his old computer. He's already deleted and re-partitioned, quick-formatted the hard drive and reinstalled a clean WinXP Home install.

He'd like to over-wright the free space on the drive so as to disallow anyone the possibility of recovering deleted information. I told him that simply filling the drive with garbage (not big, only 40GB-or-so) and then deleting all that info a few times would probably suffice, but he still worries.

I know some programs will extend the delete functionality to shred files with a specified number of passes. But anyone recommend something, free, that will shred already freed space?

 

[MrChad]

http://www.dban.org

This can wipe a hard-drive clean to DoD-level specifications if you're super-paranoid. It will re-format the drive entirely, so he'll need to reinstall Windows.

 

[tomt4535]

Originally posted by: MrChad
http://www.dban.org

This can wipe a hard-drive clean to DoD-level specifications if you're super-paranoid. It will re-format the drive entirely, so he'll need to reinstall Windows.

That would probably be the easiest and safest way to do it

 

[WildHorse]

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[0roo0roo]

think eraser does free space..not sure.

inany case u are right..if you fill the space and erase it, i'll be gone. the whole 7 pass bs was based on very old drives with different tech, and speculation really, but it got repeated until it became one of those myths that gets passed around. plus i'm sure many techs like to tout it to make them seem like they are doing something for their client 😛 reality is one overwrite is going to wipe sh*t off. even the most expensive data recovery services out there aren't going to do squat for you if you've overwritten your stuff. never mind whip out the electron microscope doodads