Deleting white space?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gonzo
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Gonzo

How can I delete white space? I want to make sure confidentual data is
destroyed from my hard disk forever.

Thanks
 
Gonzo said:
How can I delete white space?
Click to expand...


White space? Do you mean files that have deleted?

I want to make sure confidentual data
is destroyed from my hard disk forever.
Click to expand...



It all depends on how paranoid you want to be. Sinply deleting a file often
leaves it possible for someone to
recover it, but they have to actively want to and try to do this. Because
that's a rare occurrence, just deleting it is probably good enough for most
people.

If you want to do more, there are freeware/shareware programs available that
will overwrite the data, one or several times. That makes it much harder to
recover anything.



It's important, however, to recognize that there is *no* way to be sure that
"confidentual data is destroyed from [your] hard disk foreve." Even
overwriting it multiple times isn't necessarily good enough; there are
sophisticated (and expensive) techniques that can often recover even
overwritten data. For that reason, the US govenment destroys drives
containing sensitive data in a furnace, rather than relying on overwriting.


But if you're not an international spy, you probably don't have data that
warrants that kind of treatment. I'd either just delete it, or use one of
the overwriting programs I mentioned above. Google will find you several
choices.
 
Then remove and crush the hard-drive, that will prevent anyone from
reading anything from the drive. Otherwise if you are THAT concerned
about the financial cost of using a computer, you probably shouldn't be
using one.
 
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