Securely wiping my drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Leer
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Dave Leer

Is there a built in way to to securely wipe all traces of data from my XP
drive?

If not, can anyone recommend a 3rd part program? I do not mind paying for
good quality.

Thanks!!!
 
Dave Leer said:
Is there a built in way to to securely wipe all traces of data from my XP
drive?

If not, can anyone recommend a 3rd part program? I do not mind paying for
good quality.
Click to expand...

The only way to *guarantee* that the contents of a hard drive cannot
be recovered is to physically destroy the drive by putting it through
a metal crusher/shredder.

To ensure that the drive contents are not recoverable by anybody
without the most sophisticated technology and a very large budget you
can use a "drive wiping" utility. There are a number of these
available. They do take a while to run, especially the ones that do
mutiple passes through the drive, but then these are the best. Check
with www.download.com for a good selection of products.

To ensure that the drive contents are not recoverable by the average
user use disk partitioning software (e.g. FDISK) from a Windows 98 SE
boot disk) to delete the existing partition(s) on the hard drive.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
Dave said:
Is there a built in way to to securely wipe all traces of data from my XP
drive?

If not, can anyone recommend a 3rd part program? I do not mind paying for
good quality.

Thanks!!!
Click to expand...

Some suggest that defrag, by rewriting existing files, will wipe deleted
files. This generally requires that the space occupied by non-deleted
files exceeds the space that had been occupied by deleted files.

I use Eraser, which I found at
<http://www.sdean12.org/Comparison_Shredders.htm>.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my <http://www.rossde.com/PGP/>
 
Dave said:
Is there a built in way to to securely wipe all traces of data from my XP
drive?

If not, can anyone recommend a 3rd part program? I do not mind paying for
good quality.

Thanks!!!
Click to expand...


To protect your personal information and data from any future users
of average skills, you should, at the very least, format the hard drive
and reinstall only the OS and those applications whose licenses are to
be included in the sale/transfer. If you wish to do a more thorough job
of protecting your personal data, WipeDrive 2.2.1
(http://www.accessdata.com/Product07_Overview.htm?ProductNum=07) meets
U.S. DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard
drives, and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and
applications.


--

Bruce Chambers

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrum Russell
 
Dave said:
Is there a built in way to to securely wipe all traces of data from
my XP drive?
Click to expand...


If you literally mean " wipe all traces of data," no.

There's only one way to guarantee that the data can't be recovered, and
that's to physically destroy the disk (which is what the US government does
with sensitive data). There are sophisticated (and expensive) data recovery
techniques that can often recover even overwritten data.

Of course, what lengths you want to go to to make data unrecoverable depends
on what the data is and how paranoid you are. For most people, simply
formatting the drive is enough. If you want to be extra cautious, run any of
the several freeware/shareware utilities that overwrite the drive. But
realize that perfection isn't possible, short of physical destruction.
 
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