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Cleaning a hard drive

I've just bought a new second hand hard drive and I want to make sure that it is completely clean of any of the other users data.

Is formatting sufficient or is there any software around that will do the job ?

Cheers
 
Formatting will be fine. if you want to be sure, use a normal format instead of a quick one.

If its got some really really sensitive data on there, you can use something like killdisk, but thats only worth doing if you got something like all your card details on there or some such. Which you shouldnt.
 
Just to basically repeat what Old Dude is saying ...

If by completely clean you mean empty as far as the _OS_ is concerned then yes a format will do it. If on the other hand you mean that no previous data on it should be recoverable in any circumstance (format doesn't remove old data, just ignores the old filesystem pointers to it) then you will have to use a program to repeatedly overwrite the whole disk with random data, before you then format it.

I can't speak for Killdisk but I normally use "Boot and Nuke" ( http://dban.sourceforge.net/ ) which is pretty well known. Obviously be very careful when selecting your disk volumes to erase ... :eek:
 
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Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place but -

MaxBlast 4 Features

Creates a bootable MaxBlast 4 installation diskette.

* Compatible with Windows 98SE, Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.
* Breaks the 528 MB, 2.1 GB, 4.2 GB, 8.4 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB and 137 GB capacity barriers.
* Supports both FAT32 and NTFS drive partitions.
* Easy to use, Graphical Interface (GUI) with mouse and printer support.
* Supports up to four ATA devices in the same system*.
* The copy feature lets you make an exact duplicate of your existing hard drive.
* Fast ATA and Serial ATA compatible.
* The installation tutorial option allows you to view the installation process before physically installing your Maxtor ATA hard drive.

It doesn't seem to do secure drive erasure ? :hrmph:
 
you can $00 fill the drive, takes forever mind you, for example, Maxblast 3 took 10 HOURS to $00 fill an 80GB drive
 
Ah, right. I'd forgotten how long "proper" erasure can take (think 10 hours is pushing it a bit though, especially since privacy freaks don't really like non-random wipes).

About the fastest way to do a "securish" wipe is probably to format, install your programs, and get a utility to do a free space wipe e.g. Shred 2 (after a quick Google, never used myself) - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,273,00.asp . :)

EDIT: My mistake, looks like Shred 2 is a paid download, anyway maybe you can find it elsewhere, or something that's similar. You might want to read the start of this article about erasure -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,13352,00.asp . :)
 
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As an experiment I one did a multiple re-partition/format on an old harddrive and then tried to recover data using a freeware program from a cover disk; despite re-patitioning 3 times to different sizes and a full format each time I still recovered over 70% of what was on the drive.
McAffee used to do a secure wipe program that overwrote with random data and deleted 3 times, claiming not even the US government could recover the data howeverif you are trying to make sure theres nothing dodgy under the formatting then the cheapest way would be to copy large av files onto the disk until it was full and the erase, do that a couple of times and virtually nothing of the underlying data should be recoverable.

Handy tip
If you are getting rid of an old drive and want to make sure you have cleaned it thoroughly of all private data wrap it in an old towel and boil wash it then tumble dry at the maximum temperature.
I can quarantee nobody will ever recover your data!!
 
Modern hard drives manage their bad sectors internally, if a sector becomes unreliable, the drive controller will allocate one of the spare sectors reserved for this purpose and attempt to recover the data to the new sector, the substitution is recorded in non-volatile memory so the bad sector is not used again.

So even after a drive is erased, if you can clear the controller's bad sector list, a few sectors of data may still be recoverable without any speciallised equipment. If I wanted to guarantee my data was safe, seeing as I don't have a furnace, I'd hit it repeatedly with the forged steel head of my 22lbs fine adjuster.
 
I remember the story of someone buying a hard drive of Ebay. Supposdly formatted.

Contained all the National Insurance numbers etc of all the Scottish & Newcastle retail staff, directors etc.:eek:
 
I bought a surplus PC from a London college that had 8 gigs of students data on it earlier this year.
 
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Thanks for all the advise guys. I'll give them a go once I received the new drive (after I've had look at whats been on it before mind you:laugh: :laugh: )
 
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