giving away

[Greg12]

i'm giving away an old pc running windows 3.11


i need a prog to erase the hd so my files can't be recovered.

[mole]

Western Digital or Maxtor's website have utils that will erase HDs clean

they work on all drives, no matter what manufacturer..
good luck

[jeex]

wouldnt a good old dos format work?

go to dos and type;

format c: [then hit enter]

[KuskenLars]

Even when formatting data can get retrieved by for example Fast File Undelete...

[bigmicka]

who cares? its only 3.11

how big is this drive? 400mb? 500mb?

if the computer is old go into the bios and try and do a low level format. otherwise just put it into another computer and just continually put files on to it until its unrecognisable.

mic

[TIbrO]

Wow, really? I thought formatting was the ultimate in removing data...
I didn't know you could recover data after formatting...
Are you guys sure?
If so, how can you do it?
In the upgrade to Windows XP I lost my mp3 drive, and I had to reformat it and re-encode everything... So my mp3s are recovered, but if data didn't go away when you formatted, how can it have all that free space again?

[jeex]

I'd like the same answer as TirbO. If you format a harddrive, how do you go in and recover the data? Say I went in and formatted my D: drive (30 gig harddrive with 4 dvdrips, soon to be encoded). say, i just went in the to dos prompt through windows me and typed in;

"format d:" [enter]

and then let it proceed formatting the drive.


is there a way to recover the dvdrips on the drive i just formatted?

[dacmo]

Well, just doing a format c: or whatever drive letter in DOS does not actually physically eliminate all the data. With the right software tools, you can recover some or most of the data from that formatted harddisk. What you need is to low level format the hd from BIOS. Get into your BIOS setup and you should have an option to reformat the hard disk from there especially with older PCs. This actually rebuilds the harddisk partitions and all the fun stuff. So, the data is pretty much unrecoverable. If you want a more full proof solution, there are some shareware and commercial software out there that will totally obliterate your data. You can check out download.com or one of these websites to find them. They basically write and overwrite the harddisk with either zeros or just plain junk so that no magnetic traces of your past data exist anymore.

Hope this helps.

[kitty]

Norton has utilities Wipefile & Wipedisk that write to all areas (1's, 0's, patterns) even to USGovt specs that wipes well. Might not stand a microscopic exam but no proggie will get the data back.

[Riot_Inc]

Isn't there people that specialize in recovering data from disks? I'm not sure what their called, but i'd like to be one of them.

[video567]

how about the program evidence eliminator?

[iant]

Just a quick warning here. If you do a BIOS low-level format on most of the more recent hard drives( bigger than 540meg usually ) you will destroy them. I've made this mistake with a 1.2 gig WD. Nice paperweight now. ;(

Go to the manufaturers site and get a low-level formatting utility direct from them. It may be a bit more mucking around but it's at least guaranteed to not destroy your disk.

[nfl2k2]

Start your computer in ms-dos mode and type in " format c: " in the command line. then it'll say 'you sure you wanna do this?', then chose yes. once it's done formatting, load windoz back on ur computer and nothing can be found on ur HD again.

[jeex]

dacmo,

with what "right software tools" can i recover data off a harddrive that i did a dos format with?

[pacmania_2001]

Lost and Found I believe can recover files after a dos format. Also I am a bit skeptical of Norton WipeInfo. I deleted a file with using more than the US government specs says to and I could still recover it days later with Norton UnErase. To fully delete your hard drive do a low level format. Then make a file in dos, copy it over and over again until it fills the hard drive, do another format then there will be no trace left

[kinneera]

DOD security requires seven sector overwrites using special magnetic patterns to guarantee data elimination. Highly sensitive magnetic sensing devices can detect magnetic patterns corresponding to files that have been overwritten several times. Even solid state RAM can leave some traces of data for hours or days at a time...

[KuskenLars]

"Fast File Undelete" and "Fast File Recovery" can get back the files, search for them at altavista and you can download a trial...

Can' remember who made the programs though... (Not sitting at home right now)
I'll write it later today (Living in GMT +1)

[Psycho_Dad_Rules]

Hi all,

Okay first of, what the format command really does is first check your drive for errors. This is the slow procces with the precentage counter. And then it erases you FAT (File allocation Table). So no file can be opened through normal dos/win programs. The FAT is a table saying from which sector till what sector a file is allocated. With this erased, the operating system cannot access these file. BUT with a sector scanner/dumper you can still access all the data/files from your hd. It's all still there, only problem is. where does a file start and end.....
Furthermore if you type this in DOS : C:\>format c:
What happens is it checks your drive, copies the FAT to to the end of the disc for salvage purposses and the erases the original one. So a format this way can easily be undone with unformat (Which is part of DOS 6.xx)
To prevent the FAT from being copied type this instead :
C:\>format c: /u

So the easiest way to complete erase your valuable data is to format using the /u option and filling the complete drive with crap. This way every sector of the drive is complete rewritten.

Greetz,

pSyChO dAd

[jeex]

ya learn something new everyday.

thanks psychodad

[KuskenLars]

http://www.dtidata.com
Here you can get "Fast File Undelete" to retrieve deleted files...

[nittany]

I used to do data recovery. If you want to recover data after a format, there are undelete utilities out there. A lot of times these undelete utilities won't recover the entire file if the file spans across more than one cluster. If the file is a text file, and you have an idea what it is about, you can use a low-level hex editor to find all the parts of the file and piece them back together yourself. Norton's Disk Editor is a great tool. It is a low-level hex editor with many features. It is included in Norton Utilities. It has saved my butt many times. I just used it to save my friend's butt by fixing his partition table, boot sector and root directory by hand after something hosed all 3 of them.

The quick and easy way to wipe a hard drive is by writing across all sectors (ex. Write random data across all sectors. You can do this easily under linux (cat /dev/random >& /dev/hda)).

[mijman]

what kind of a world do we live in, when format doesn't format?
The next time, I need to do this, I'll fill my drive up with AVI files and DVD rips. But seven times? Dang that takes a long time. Better make sure you got something to hide before going through all that crap.
But to do that, you'd need to re-install windows, right? so any utility or proggie would have to be DOS based.
Are DVDrom drives capable of running on a totaly clean DOS system, or do they need drivers of some kind?
You could just copy the files of some DVD movies over and over.

[grouch]

The best program that I know of to completelly make your data unrecoverable is Evidence Eliminator. Use the DoD setting which will actually write all 0s then all 1's then random 1's and 0's to the entire disk. This makes the microscopic testing unrecoverable aswell. The military uses this program every once in a while to clean hard drives that were compromised with classified information. And for informational purposes, what they are looking at with the electronmicroscope is the magnetic traces on the disk surface that are left behind after a wipe. Making the disk have all 0's and 1's and then random's makes the recovery process no longer possible since the residual magnetism was replaced several times by the time they get to it. Hope it helps your quest for the true format program.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: grouch on 2001-09-16 00:19:33 ]</font>

[mole]

i find the best way to completely erase all data is to blast apart the hard drive with a shotgun. Then all my "top-secret" data is thus eliminated.

[next]

Not that I'm trying to hide anything here but I think the /u switch will do it. Of course from the DOS format command.

[energy80s]

Download BC Wipe, it's freeware. Choose the 7 wipe setting (US Military standard) and wipe the drive. Nothing will be found after that.

[Greg12]

what about guttman 35 pass.

[d4n13l]

I would be very sceptical about any US Military Standards.
Why? Think about it - If they make people believe that their files are gone for good, they could recover "deleted" data from peoples HDDs if they really wanted. Damn feds.
The best way to permanently delete your data is to smash your HD into tiny peices, blow torch it for 6 hours, microwave it, encase it in cement with powerfull magnets and drop off the back off a trans Atlantic cruise ship mid journey.

Like Mulder says:
"Trust no one"