Need Help with Hard drives!

Unless my theory is all wrong, the utility to wipe the hard drive is windows based, and wont wipe out windows. Isn't just removing the partition good enough?

No! I just found an utility that let me recover data from partitions that I made a YEAR AGO!!!!
That's way I'm asking for an utility that rewrites the deleted data more that 7 or 9 times!!!!!
A GOOD ONE!!!

[Message Edited]

This has a 30-day free trial...

http://www.iolo.com/ss/

http://www.evidence-eliminator.com/


Everything I delete is wiped out by WinWash. What these do is write 1s and 0s over your data. When you defrag, the deleted data is usually overwritten afterwards.

Even after formatting, if someone wanted to get data off the disk, it would still be possible. I have never used what I linked.

, go to that site I linked and enter it.

Everyone get this message in the yellow block?

"URGENT NEWSFLASH SATURDAY 14 JUNE 2003 - YOUR INTERNET TRAFFIC IS BEING ROUTED THROUGH THE **ENTER ISP, City and State** UNITED STATES - YOU ARE AT VERY HIGH RISK OF INVESTIGATION!"

I think Eraser may do what you want and it is free. http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/



[Message Edited]

Evidence Eliminator's marketing techniques are not regarded highly on the net, shall I say. And look at the price. Eraser, in contrast, is said to be effective and is free.



[Message Edited]

*Shmoopy*: Thanks, I just got this a few months ago, you can customize a message in case somebody can retrieve something in your hard drive! My message is: What the **** are you looking for? NO! I'm kidding! I would like to do this from DOS, since windows saves some information about yourself (.NET, hotmail, you know). In the PC MAGAZINE edition where WindowBlinds and ObjectDesktop are displayed, I found some apps, like ERASER (sig101). I will try them all today!
Thanks Guys!

http://www.iolo.com/ds/
This is perfect!!!!!!!!!
[Message Edited]

What Manufacturer are you speaking of for the drives?

You can go to each Drive Manufacturers Web Site and download the respective software for safe low level formating which should also have the option for a Government Accepted Drive Wipe ( continuous formating with data being written to the drive and it being reformatted, so that NO previous data will be left on the drive on compleation)...

SeaGate
Maxtor
Western Digital
etc, name it and the drive will have a web site with FREE software for diagnostics, recovery and formating which is almost exclusivly OnTrack (tm).


Good luck with it

oh! Thanks, I didn't know that! I have a dell, and two laptops IBM ThinkPad!
I will look for that! thanks!

Actually, u can just format the whole drive, the recovery program won't do anything after the buyer of that drive installs things. U see, when u delete something, it only deletes the out side cover, not the inside. So, recovery program basically gets the inside back to the outside. However, when you install something or download other things after the delete process, it'll simply over write the inside part, leaving no data possible to be recovered. All you got to do is basically format the drive no matter what kind of hard disk you have.

Hope this helped
(if anyone have some questions based on computers, i might be able to help a little )

Ok you have way too many answers here to look thru... but the truth of the matter is.

Formating does not make recovery impossible

nor does blowing your partitions.

the only way to secure a hard drive is to fill it with garbage data. PGPwipe can fill your HD with garbage. It takes quite a long time to fill an HD... consider that it writes over it 3 times. after do so you can reformat to kill the garbage and your original data can not be retrieved... here is a http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/true/882/Comparison_Shredders.htm to a page that has several programs listed that can clean your HD. Your looking for one that will run from a start up disk in a dos environment.

and should you wish to be able to recover any data deleted I suggest R-Tools by R-Studio.

I recovered an entire HD that had its partitions blown and then formated... long story another thread...



[Message Edited]

Static that is a Govermental Disk Wipe, which is an option of almost all Mfg Disk Management Utility software

format, write all 0's, format, write all 1's, format..... between 4 - 7 times depending on the depth of security lay. there are some other things that are also done in the process, such as a *safe* IDE low level format which is simular to the Low Level Debug command one can use to take out a SCSI to clean platters, but it reads the Cache chip on the drives mom-board so it does not loose the factor map of bad sectors, which can realy hose up speeds of access if lost.

You might want to try BCwipe. Shareware, 30-day free evaluation.
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=1016605799

You can go to each Drive Manufacturers Web Site and download the respective software for safe low level formating

IPlural is right. Low level formatting with the drive manufacturers' low level format utility is the best option. Doing this writes zeros to the drive and makes any existing data unrecoverable.

, as far as I know it is pretty simpel, just insert a boot floppy, (the best is something like win 98 setup) and type: format

Then they have no OS.
You can also start a linux setup, and do a format at low level, then evryghing is gone.


I know its not my busnis, but why do you want to remove all stuff from your harddrive? if you sell them, persons won't go and recover your hd and stuff like that...