[redandblue]

Hello,

I was just wondering if anyone knows how I can totally erase my hard drive and of any so called Ghosts without destorying the hard drive?

Or would it be better to take out the hard drive and destory it and buy a new one? It's a visa by the way.

Thanks

[Advertisements]

You can use software to overwrite the data on it. It can only be recovered with a lot of time and money after that. If you truly want to eliminate everything on that drive, take a hammer to it and beat it into smithereens, or throw it in a hot fire.

If you want to reuse the hard drive, and it's staying in your possesion, a reformat will make the old data "invisible" and eventually it will be gone as the space is used again.
HTH
Johanna

[Johanna]

You can use software to overwrite the data on it. It can only be recovered with a lot of time and money after that. If you truly want to eliminate everything on that drive, take a hammer to it and beat it into smithereens, or throw it in a hot fire.

If you want to reuse the hard drive, and it's staying in your possesion, a reformat will make the old data "invisible" and eventually it will be gone as the space is used again.
HTH
Johanna

[SpywareDr]

DBAN

[redandblue]

Thanks Johanna,

So basically there is no programme that I can use that will totally erase everything which is not possible for anyone to ever find and still use the hard drive again? Would Dban do this? Or is it still possible for some expert to possibly restore stuff?

If I do get rid of it and buy a new hard drive (it's a vista/acer PC) how much is a new hard drive? And I have a Blank Recovery DVD for the acer.

Edited by redandblue, 16 March 2010 - 06:22 AM.

[DaffyKantReed]

Dban and BCWipe booted from CD/DVD or a USB thumb drive will overwrite existing data on the hard drive.

http://www.jetico.com/wiping-bcwipe/

[redandblue]

I have heard that if I take it back to factory condition with the Acer eRecovery Management Acer EMEA - Service & Support, Empowering Technology that will totally clear all my history better than Dban and BCWipe?

[DaffyKantReed]

A modern hard drive has high areal density. This means more and more data is placed in a given area of platter space. This means that for all intents and purposes, a single on-track erasure using SE (below) should thwart even the good folks at the NSA.

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu...HDDEraseWeb.zip

[123Runner]

Reformatting and reloading the OS only "marks" the portions of the drive as usable. The data can be recovered with good software.

Dban security wipes the drive. It writes 1 and 0's to the drive. After that, no-one can recover the data.

[Johanna]

If I had regular personal stuff, DBAN or one of the equivalents would be fine for me to use and give my old computer away. If I absolutely could not risk that data being discovered, I would physically destroy the hard drive. With enough time and motivation, you would be surprised what a hard drive can reveal, even after a good wiping.
Johanna

[FNP]

I heard that the U.S. government, after wiping their sensitive drives, takes an acetylene torch andquite literally fries their drives. Lol.

DBAN has been very useful to me; I wiped our old family desktop before donating it, and DBAN ran very well. Go Derik!

[DaffyKantReed]

@FearNothingProductions

http://www.nsa.gov/i...tion_Manual.pdf

Degaussing is popular in some segments of the private sector as well.