Here's a little "tidbit" I had not considered. I need a "Warrior techie" to verify.

14 years ago

Without getting too much into detail; there is some merit to the what's deleted isn't ever really deleted, deal.

You can still give the computer to your friend; just keep the hard drive, (or take it out and destroy it if you have no further use for it). Your friend can get another "clean/new" hard drive for a decent price, (cheap).

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4morereferrals 14 years ago

There was a piece on the news in the states about the recycled pc's going to 3rd world countries and NOT really getting recycled. They were getting scrapped for the gold and silver on the motherboards and memory.

The most valuable commodity though, was the info they were able to mine off the memory sticks, and the motherboards.

Hard drives were a bonus.

One of my clients does hard drive data recovery work for the feds. They hire him to try and get info off bad guys drives after the bad guys have tried to erase or destroy data on the drives. He advises ... take a drill and drill a hole all the way thru it. Thru all the platters. No data recovery possible then. I drill a couple of em.

I had like 25 drives in my office storage room - cuz we cant recycle em knowing what we know .... that little trick allowed me to purge those clunkers out of my life.

I dont have an answer for data destruction on memory sticks and mother boards - sorry.
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David Louis Monk

14 years ago

I suppose with memory sticks and the like you would need to use a trusted file eraser that overwrites all the memory several or more times to utterly erase the data. You have to be sure the software does as it states on the tin and destroys evidence of the data that was once stored.
For destroying hard drives I would agree that drilling through all of the platters is the best way of making sure no-one else is going to be able to access the data on it.

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onlineballa

14 years ago

Or you could just throw the hard drive into a fire, I'm sure that would do the trick haha

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Dan C. Rinnert 14 years ago

Originally Posted by onlineballa

Or you could just throw the hard drive into a fire, I'm sure that would do the trick haha

Not necessarily. Data has been recovered from hard drives that were burned in home and business fires.
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- PCRoger 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert
  
  Not necessarily. Data has been recovered from hard drives that were burned in home and business fires.
  
  That's why you shoot a couple holes in it first!
  
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  bretski 14 years ago
  
  Here at work we hold onto the hard drives, format them (DOD wipe - multiple passes) and then store them until one of us in the IT department starts having a bad day. Then we take them out to the dumpster and proceed to fling the thing against the brick wall or side of the dumpster. Then you get to jump on it, rip the platters from the drive and shatter those. One guy used to hold onto some of the pieces of the drive and if someone complained after they deleted a file he would show them the piece of the hard drive and tell them "I found your data..."
  
  Honestly, hard drives are so cheap these days that a replacement costs less than a good dinner out for you and a date.
  
  There are many ways to recover data very easily these days including live Linux disks etc...a regular formatting of a hard drive only wipes out the file allocation table, which is the file that says "that file is over there..." Check out a live Linux distro if you're a little geeky
  
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ErnieB

14 years ago

interesting, I had always thought that a simple reformat of the HD did the trick.

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wiseleo

14 years ago

Nonsense.

Run DBAN on it. http://dban.org

I own a data recovery company and I can't recover data after it.

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scrofford

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Dixiebelle

I just bought a new laptop.

The salesman at Best Buy told me to hold on to my old computer, after transferring my data and installed programs, for at least 30 days - preferably 60 - before selling it, or giving it away.

He said, all the new owner has to do is plug it in, boot it up, and do a system restore, and they have all your info, including your passwords, email addresses, and any other personal information that you thought you deleted, because the information remains there for a while.

I promised my old computer to a friend, but if this is true, I think I'll hang onto it for a while, so that I can test it before giving it away.

I hope this helped someone.

Dixie

All of the other replies here are quite interesting. Really all you have to do is reformat the hard drive and put a fresh copy of Windows on there. Reformatting wipes the hard drive completely clean. It's that simple. You don't have to hold on to the machine after you have done that.

Unless you do data recovery and have the equipment, they can't get to it. It is gone.

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Nigels 14 years ago

It all depends on how cautious you feel you need to be. If you must be absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, not even a super secret govt agency could get at the data sure then you have to remove the hard drive and utterly destroy it.

On the other hand, if your friend is unlikely to spend large sums of money on a data recovery firm (I understand they are expensive) then Scrofford is right. Reformatting and reinstalling windows will meet your needs. It will certainly stop system restore bringing back any of your information.
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- Thomas71 Banned 14 years ago
  
  Hi!
  
  I agree with wiseleo. Run dban. dban is free and wipes your harddrive completely. It is extremely powerful, and when you are finished you have a new compuer without OS. It will take some time depending on what OS you have.
  
  //Thomas
  
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Johnny Slater

14 years ago

This is completey false. I have at least 4 programs on my hard drive right now that can recover an entire hard drive after it has been reformatted. I even have one program that can recover a drive that has had the file system completely removed and a new file system installed on the drive. There is only one good way, short of completely destroying the drive, to make sure your data isn't able to be recovered.

There are programs called shredders. They erase files and rewrite junk data over the area at least 7 times. Even with a reformat the data can still be recovered unless that area of the hard drive is overwritten a number of times. Most DOD grade (Department Of Defense) shredders will do the trick. Several allow you to choose how many times to overwrite any specific area. Last time I checked most experts recommend at least 7 rewrites to make data unrecoverable but that could have changed by now.

Edit: Just to clarify something. A reformat is basically the same thing as deleting the files normally. When you write files to a drive your OS keeps a sort of record that the data is there. Deleting files normally just causes the OS to remove the record of the file being on the drive, it doesn't actually remove the data from the drive. In simple terms it just marks that area of the drive as empty to allow any new data stored to be written in that spot on the drive. A reformat for the most part just clears all records for that drive causing the OS to see it as an empty drive. The data is still there but there is no record of it in the OS.

There are quite a few file recovery programs available for free as well as paid versions. Some of the free programs are quite good and can recover data that has been overwritten 1 or 2 times. Don't assume it takes a lot of money to recover a hard drive. All you really need is a computer to hook the drive to and the right recovery software.

Originally Posted by scrofford

All of the other replies here are quite interesting. Really all you have to do is reformat the hard drive and put a fresh copy of Windows on there. Reformatting wipes the hard drive completely clean. It's that simple. You don't have to hold on to the machine after you have done that.

Unless you do data recovery and have the equipment, they can't get to it. It is gone.

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scrofford

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Johnny Slater

This is completey false. I have at least 4 programs on my hard drive right now that can recover an entire hard drive after it has been reformatted. I even have one program that can recover a drive that has had the file system completely removed and a new file system installed on the drive. There is only one good way, short of completely destroying the drive, to make sure your data isn't able to be recovered.

There are programs called shredders. They erase files and rewrite junk data over the area at least 7 times. Even with a reformat the data can still be recovered unless that area of the hard drive is overwritten a number of times. Most DOD grade (Department Of Defense) shredders will do the trick. Several allow you to choose how many times to overwrite any specific area. Last time I checked most experts recommend at least 7 rewrites to make data unrecoverable but that could have changed by now.

Edit: Just to clarify something. A reformat is basically the same thing as deleting the files normally. When you write files to a drive your OS keeps a sort of record that the data is there. Deleting files normally just causes the OS to remove the record of the file being on the drive, it doesn't actually remove the data from the drive. In simple terms it just marks that area of the drive as empty to allow any new data stored to be written in that spot on the drive. A reformat for the most part just clears all records for that drive causing the OS to see it as an empty drive. The data is still there but there is no record of it in the OS.

There are quite a few file recovery programs available for free as well as paid versions. Some of the free programs are quite good and can recover data that has been overwritten 1 or 2 times. Don't assume it takes a lot of money to recover a hard drive. All you really need is a computer to hook the drive to and the right recovery software.

If the OP is giving the computer to just a friend and not a business, or if the friend isn't into IM, then reformatting the hard drive WILL do the trick and should take care of the concern.

Unless the friend knows anything about data recovery and has the software to do it, reformatting should do the trick just fine. I was talking about this on a level of most people and their knowledge about recovering data. I would say that your average computer user knows nothing about data recovery.

Now if the friend is into IM and is interested in business, then you might want to replace the hard drive before giving it to them.

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seasoned

14 years ago

Dixiebelle,

A system restore will do NOTHING with the data. The person you spoke with was parroting something they didn't understand. The BEST thing would be to do a LOW LEVEL format, run one of those programs that writes several patterns to the disk, and then do a SYSTEM restore. THAT way, even the FBI would have trouble recovering anything.

But that IS a lot of work. You could also do a high level format, restore the system, and hope nobody tries to get stuff recovered.

You could also delete all your files, licensed apps, and clear ANY files from apps that access the internet, like cookies etc... and THEN run one of those apps to write over unused space.

BTW drilling holes through platters won't work! If the FBI, for example, wanted to read the data, they could burnish the holes down, or use VERY sensitive heads, and recover nearly all data BUT that on the blocks affected by the holes. If the holes are very close to the inside or outside, that might be 100% of the data! The drill holes method only works in TWO ways! ***ONE*** ****IF**** the hole is on data, or in an important part of that block, THAT data might be lost. ***TWO*** ****IF**** they use a normal high density head to read the data, the burrs on the hole, or difference in height can cause a disk crash, and stop the reading process. The FBI has FAR better methods!

ErnieB,

You USED to be right! In a way, you still are. Reformatting disks(Writing timing marks, etc...) takes a LONG time and, as disks got larger, it became more cumbersome. ALSO, companies like to HIDE defects! So the old formatting is now called LOW LEVEL! Once formatted that way, the disk drive will often NOT be able to read your data again. The only exception is on some that have hardware formatting, but I don't know if any of those are even made today.

When most speak of formatting today, they mean HIGH level. IT just resets pointers and sets some housekeeping info. If a program ignores that, it is easy to get most of your info back, even on a disk that looks EMPTY! The drive can easily read it, but the O/S just doesn't even bother!

Steve

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jjpmarketing

14 years ago

While DBAN may be sufficient for his friend taking the computer, the best way is to use companies that specialize in data destruction. I have worked in IT for several years and one company I worked at used a company in NJ that would actually put your hard drive through the equivalent of a "hard drive garbage disposal". It basically came out in tiny pieces.

They also recylced the old compnents.

We also had a program that we ran on the drive several times before shipping it. It basically wrote all zeros... and then all ones to the drive... as many times as you wanted it to. You could set it to do it 10 or more times if you had the time or desire to do so.

Dennis

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Intrepreneur 14 years ago

You can tell why he works for Best Buy and not Microsoft.

He's full of hot air.

What he really should have said is that formatting your hard drive won't remove all you precious data completely and that you need to use another solution on top of formatting to ensure nothing is left behind.

I can't remember the name of such software that you need to use but someone else might. But definitely if you're worried get that software and use it first.
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seasoned

14 years ago

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

While DBAN may be sufficient for his friend taking the computer, the best way is to use companies that specialize in data destruction. I have worked in IT for several years and one company I worked at used a company in NJ that would actually put your hard drive through the equivalent of a "hard drive garbage disposal". It basically came out in tiny pieces.

They also recylced the old compnents.

Even so, that is a WASTE!

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

We also had a program that we ran on the drive several times before shipping it. It basically wrote all zeros... and then all ones to the drive... as many times as you wanted it to. You could set it to do it 10 or more times if you had the time or desire to do so.

Dennis

If you do this ONCE with the whole disk, nobody would be able to use the drive to get the old data. If you did it maybe 7 times, even the fbi would have a very hard time.

PROGRAMS work by simply using the drive to read a part of the disk that hasn't been written to since the file was deleted. If that part last had garbage in it, that garbage is all you can get.

The FBI supposedly has instruments that can actually read varying field strengths off the disk, and isolate layers, but that requires basically using their device as a drive, and they only use the disks.

Steve

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mobear410

14 years ago

How about a stupid question? What about sticking a large magnet on the drive after you high level format? Would this keep the government at bay?

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Here's a little "tidbit" I had not considered. I need a "Warrior techie" to verify.

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