This is from a website erasing stuff from harddrives

[GenuineGenius]

"Your hard drive might appear clean... but still be full of 'sensitive material' that you did not want to download in the first place and it might very well be a Serious Criminal Offence in your country to have that data stored on your computer even if you didn't know it was still there. You could go to Jail! Pressing 'Delete' or emptying your 'Recycle Bin' - or even 'Formatting' your disk - simply will not work, the 'sensitive material' will still remain on your hard drive!" Is it true? link

 

[MrCodeDude]

I'm Confused.
-- mrcodedude

 

[GenuineGenius]

u know, the sensitive material is pr0n

edit - not that i have any

 

[mackstann]

The info is still there, but the pointers to it in the FAT are not there. When you delete a file, it just deletes the reference to it in the FAT and opens up that space for other stuff to be written. But you can never tell how long it sits there before REALLY getting written over. There are programs that will totally delete stuff, look around.

 

[bacillus]

<< u know, the sensitive material is pr0n >>


I'm sure that there are things more sensitive than that!
why do you think some stuff is encrypted??

 

[DisinfectedDuck]

This evidence-eliminator looks like a powerfull program, but it can also all be BS and it's just another one of those disc cleaners.

 

[Generalen]

It don't help to cut a harddrive to pieces, the information can still be recovered. Atleast that what I've heard.

 

[odog]

the only thing that can really kill any and all references to the data, is something called the DOD(yes that DOD) 7 level format. it basically writes 0's then 1's seven times each. at that point not even tearing the drive up and scanning the platter for residual magnetic traces can recover the data.

 

[mcveigh]

yes from what I've heard the only way to &quot;wipe&quot; your hard drive is to overwrite the data enough so that the original can't be recovered, there is a dept. of defense spec for wiping hard disks but I can't remember it.

Of course the NSA could probably still read it

 

[slipperyslope]

Yes it is true. Not even the DOD stuff is completely secure. Why do you think the NSA has never just throw away computers with their hard drives in them. They actually destroy the drives to be sure no one can find out any information on them.

At my university, I have been helping a researcher for the DOD with his computer. He had one of his SCSI drives fail. He is not even allow to send it to gateway to have it replaced nor is he allowed to send it off for data recovery. He is required to physically destroy the drive to make sure that no one could ever get access to the data.

Jim

 

[Citadel535]

There are ways to open drives and read the actaul charge on the drive's platters surface. If you are worried about it get PGP (www.pgp.com) and run the freespace wipe with around 7 passes. It is the freeware version if you cant find it on the site go to download.com and search for PGP freeware.

Basically completely erasing your drive is done by constantly writing zeros to the disk's surface (instead of 0s and 1s that are normal data).

In case you want to know why I know this I want to work on stuff like this eventually. Eventually and hopefully .

 

[Gunbuster]

Black Helocopters are on route to your house right now, better pop out your credit card and buy that software along with the X10 spy camera just for good measure

 

[myforum]

(for what it's worth):
A friend that works for ms said that all deleted data has ?? marks in front of the file names and are hidden for 7 days before totally released for real free space and also said that a freebie little program called &quot;clearhdd&quot; will clean a splatter and that low-level isn't ness. and LL should only be do my the HD mfg.

CU8er

 

[Citadel535]

I am pretty sure that PGPfreeware does everything &quot;Evidence Eliminator&quot; does and for free.

 

[Adul]

Destroy your HD.