Wipe that drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter AndrewJ
  • Start date Start date
A

AndrewJ

Before you sell that old drive don't just format it. That leaves all
the data intact. I'm shipping an old notebook drive tomorrow. I hooked
it to the desktop. Formatted it NTFS, then in FAT32, then back to
NTFS. I believe that should do it for most SOHO users.
There's a good program Eraser but I didn't want to spend hours writing
1 and 0's and making floppies.
 
AndrewJ said:
Before you sell that old drive don't just format it. That leaves all
the data intact. I'm shipping an old notebook drive tomorrow. I hooked
it to the desktop. Formatted it NTFS, then in FAT32, then back to
NTFS. I believe that should do it for most SOHO users.
There's a good program Eraser but I didn't want to spend hours writing
1 and 0's and making floppies.
Click to expand...

Then you didn't wipe your drive. Formatting it only writes where the
sectors are are going to be arrainged and what areas of the drive will
be listed as "empty." Even though you switched file systems, it doesn't
actually write over data.

----------

To reply, replace 'deadfishies' with 'bigfoot.'

We live our life in our own way, never ever listen to what they say, the
kind of faith that never fades away, we are the True Believers!
 
Gateway has a utility called GWSCAN that will write zero's to most drives in
a matter of 20 minutes.
 
after a format, remove the partitions very few average people would
be able to recover that data......if your holding the schematics to a
new cold fusion energy device on the drive, don't sell it, otherwise
let the paranoia go.
 
AndrewJ said:
Before you sell that old drive don't just format it. That leaves all
the data intact. I'm shipping an old notebook drive tomorrow. I hooked
it to the desktop. Formatted it NTFS, then in FAT32, then back to
NTFS. I believe that should do it for most SOHO users.
There's a good program Eraser but I didn't want to spend hours writing
1 and 0's and making floppies.
Click to expand...

You didn't accomplish anything by formatting. Use a utility like wipe.exe,
Eraser, or overwrite existing data with random data.
 
AndrewJ said:
Before you sell that old drive don't just format it. That leaves all
the data intact. I'm shipping an old notebook drive tomorrow. I hooked
it to the desktop. Formatted it NTFS, then in FAT32, then back to
NTFS. I believe that should do it for most SOHO users.
There's a good program Eraser but I didn't want to spend hours writing
1 and 0's and making floppies.
Click to expand...

You didn't clear that drive at all. Formatting does not overwrite the
data on the drive. You should have just used a utility like "wipe" from
bootdisk.com or similar.
 
You didnt wipe off the data, bro....

All you are suggesting is rewriting the partition tables, which doesnt really
erase the actual data. It would be fairly easy to recover the data.

Use a proven sanitation method that complies with Dept. of Defense 5220.22-M,
Chapter 8-306.....that will insure that no one can recover the data.
 
TJM said:
Use a proven sanitation method that complies with Dept. of Defense
5220.22-M, Chapter 8-306.....that will insure that no one can recover
the data.
Click to expand...

what if you rub a speaker magnet over it?
-vp
 
after a format, remove the partitions very few average people would
be able to recover that data......if your holding the schematics to a
new cold fusion energy device on the drive, don't sell it, otherwise
let the paranoia go.
Click to expand...

Agreed.Also.Most hard drive maker's have a free,"Zero-Fill" LLF(Low
Level format) program.These are not true LLF but run them twice an
even the CIA will have difficulty getting their lasers to read the
footprints ;-)



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