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please read and reply by bside on 04-11-2008 at 10:05 AM
hi i am selling my pc...... do you know when you delete some thing some of your stuff is stord on you hard drive and you can recover it eg like the police do when they take you computer. is there a softwear which i can delete every think and it can not be recovered by any one not even the police....
RE: please read and reply by Th3rmal on 04-11-2008 at 10:13 AM
Are you selling your computer to the police?
Anyway Ashampoo WinOptimizer is a great program that not only allows you tweak setting, clean the pc, tweak transparency, split files and join files, but it also allows you to wipe files permanently. Its is a great program. I personally use WinOptimizer 4
RE: please read and reply by Oxy on 04-11-2008 at 10:26 AM
Yeah, if you're selling it to any "average joe", you really don't need to worry about people retrieving your old files, as i doubt they know how to do it anyway
but if you're giving it to the police, you deserve to be found out through stupidity
RE: please read and reply by andrewdodd13 on 04-11-2008 at 03:27 PM
I loved Ashampoo stuff until I realised that most of it's functionality can be found in free software.
shred on Linux and Unix systems is extremely powerful, but it's command line, and I can't find a GUI Windows version. This looks like it's free and Windows and what you're looking for. 
RE: RE: please read and reply by matt on 04-11-2008 at 04:18 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Oxy
Yeah, if you're selling it to any "average joe", you really don't need to worry about people retrieving your old files, as i doubt they know how to do it anyway
but if you're giving it to the police, you deserve to be found out through stupidity
just like Oxy is saying, i wouldn't be worry about people ''trying'' to recover your data and even knowing how to. when i really worry about my data, i don't delete it, i keep the hard disk and get other (it's really because i can get very inexpensive hard disk with some friends in a store) new or whatever and if i REALLY need to hide my information by deleting it, i destroy it
but as you wish, if you just wanna delete a sell, you can even format your hard disk and use your windows XP CD or whatever software you have to re-install it if you know how to do that, if you don't, you can also get more help in tech talkwhat kind of information are you hiding? are you a spy or something
Edit: Don't worry about this if you are not selling it to the police
RE: please read and reply by andrey on 04-11-2008 at 04:39 PM
quote:Do a low-level format with three (or more) passes and the HDD should be safe to give away.
Originally posted by bside
hi i am selling my pc...... do you know when you delete some thing some of your stuff is stord on you hard drive and you can recover it eg like the police do when they take you computer. is there a softwear which i can delete every think and it can not be recovered by any one not even the police....
Either look on your HDD vendor's site, some provide tools to format the HDD. Or use a specialized application like KillDisk which supports several different methods to format the HDD.
But probably the safest way to erase your HDD is to destroy and burn it
You can buy a new one or sell the computer without a HDD.
RE: please read and reply by vaccination on 04-11-2008 at 05:06 PM
Format...
RE: please read and reply by Spunky on 04-11-2008 at 05:58 PM
quote:
Originally posted by MerK
and if i REALLY need to hide my information by deleting it, i destroy it
Even a HD that has been smashed to little bits and burned was still able to have 90% of it's data read
RE: please read and reply by CookieRevised on 04-11-2008 at 06:27 PM
quote:this isn't a SF movie ...
Originally posted by SpunkyLoveMuff
quote:Even a HD that has been smashed to little bits and burned was still able to have 90% of it's data read
Originally posted by MerK
and if i REALLY need to hide my information by deleting it, i destroy it
A HDD smashed to bits and burned can not be read again, certainly not 90%, even not by the cleverest hightech forensic people.
As andrey correctly pointed out, a 3-pass low level format is more than sufficient if you want to sell your PC (HDD) to someone else.
A normal quick format is not sufficient though. Everybody who can download from the internet can easly use one of the gazillions of available recovery programs to recover a HDD with is formatted like that. Then again, who would bother to do that....
RE: please read and reply by Spunky on 04-11-2008 at 06:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
this isn't a SF movie ...
It was on some news website when I was in school a few years ago
RE: please read and reply by andrewdodd13 on 04-11-2008 at 10:26 PM
Then it's lies. As soon as you break open the seal on a Hard Drive the metal plates begin to oxidise, losing any data stored on them.
Burning = combustion = reaction with air = hardcore oxidisation.
RE: please read and reply by Aardvark on 04-14-2008 at 01:06 AM
I've reformatted my hard disk at least 30 times (I'm not kidding) and I can still recover some of the information that was originally on it. Mainly just text files, everything else is majorly corrupt.
RE: please read and reply by ShawnZ on 04-14-2008 at 01:08 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Aardvark
I've reformatted my hard disk at least 30 times (I'm not kidding) and I can still recover some of the information that was originally on it.
because you're doing quick formats, not full formats. they're different.
RE: please read and reply by andrewdodd13 on 04-14-2008 at 07:41 AM
Of course, using non-forensic tools, a single full-zero format will make it exceptionally unlikely for someone to recover your private data.
On the other hand, the police would be able to - there's some trick involving inspecting the way magnetic flux was applied to the hard disk [see this] - but, that's police-really-after-you business.
And there's only one thing you would want to hide from the police...
RE: please read and reply by Th3rmal on 04-14-2008 at 07:58 AM
quote:porn?
Originally posted by andrewdodd13
And there's only one thing you would want to hide from the police...
lol joke
RE: RE: please read and reply by ryxdp on 04-14-2008 at 08:15 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Th3rmal
quote:porn?
Originally posted by andrewdodd13
And there's only one thing you would want to hide from the police...
warez?
RE: please read and reply by Aardvark on 04-15-2008 at 04:56 AM
quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
because you're doing quick formats, not full formats. they're different.
No actually I did full formats then partitions then full formats again each time. I would've thought partitioning it over and over and over would've rendered it unrecoverable but seems I was wrong.
RE: please read and reply by Jarrod on 04-15-2008 at 05:47 AM
to make a drive un recoverable
http://www.killdisk.com/
i doubt there will be any data left on it
i don't know exactly how filesystems work but changing the partitions probabally only effects the partition table
RE: please read and reply by CookieRevised on 04-15-2008 at 07:09 AM
quote:If it were truely full formats, no normal (or even available advanced) recovery program should be able to recover anything.
Originally posted by Aardvark
quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
because you're doing quick formats, not full formats. they're different.
No actually I did full formats then partitions then full formats again each time. I would've thought partitioning it over and over and over would've rendered it unrecoverable but seems I was wrong.
If you can recover something the formats wouldn't have been "full format".
RE: please read and reply by vaccination on 04-15-2008 at 08:04 AM
If you really want it to be unrecoverable, stick it the microwave.
RE: please read and reply by Jarrod on 04-15-2008 at 08:17 AM
quote:he also wants it useable
Originally posted by vaccination
If you really want it to be unrecoverable, stick it the microwave.
RE: RE: please read and reply by Aardvark on 04-16-2008 at 02:13 AM
quote:That's exactly what I thought, and yet I could still recover like three text files.
Originally posted by CookieRevised
quote:If it were truely full formats, no normal (or even available advanced) recovery program should be able to recover anything.
Originally posted by Aardvark
quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
because you're doing quick formats, not full formats. they're different.
No actually I did full formats then partitions then full formats again each time. I would've thought partitioning it over and over and over would've rendered it unrecoverable but seems I was wrong.
If you can recover something the formats wouldn't have been "full format".
I guess that means I used a dodgy program.
RE: please read and reply by Voldemort on 04-16-2008 at 02:14 AM
isn;t bside the guy from msgshit or something?
RE: please read and reply by Chris4 on 04-16-2008 at 02:18 AM
quote:Nope.
Originally posted by Voldemort
isn;t bside the guy from msgshit or something?