OT--How to clear hard drive

Eric&Susan

Hey guys and gals I have a quick question. I finally got a new computer and plan on giving the old one to my sister-in-law. Obviously I don't want her having access to all of my stuff. I have backed up my photos and music onto an external hardrive, along with other important stuff that I want on the new comp.

Now I would like to erase the hardrive to get it back to as close as possible to how it orginally came. I have found a few free ware sites but I'm not sure if this is the best way to go. Anybody have any tips or advice on how to wipe the comp clean?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

DavidTO

It would help if you would tell us what OS you're using. If a Mac, I can help, otherwise...

Eric&Susan

Sorry, it's Windows XP.

Eric

dragon300zx

Ok there are two basic levels of clearing the hard drive.

How worried about the data being recovered are you? Are we talking military secrets, or the secret family reciepe for cheese cake?

Military Secrets is more work to type out so we will just pretend it's cheese cake.

Your running windows XP on that machine so I'm going to assume you have the windows XP cd and software.

If it is a brand name computer like dell, hp, toshiba, compaq, etc.... You should have what they call recovery software that will either be on a cd that came with the computer or stored on a special partition on the hard drive.

If you have the name brand computer run this setup program. Choose the options to restore to factory condition. It will give you warnings about erasing your data. Go ahead and say ok cause you want it to erase your data and return it to factory.

If it's a computer that just has the windows disk and not a name brand type recovery program put the windows cd into the cd rom drive and start the computer.

Boot to cd and run the windows setup applications, choose setup a new installation of windows. Eventually you will get to a point where it will ask you to choose which partition you want to install on. It will also give you an option to delete the partitions.

Delete the existing partitions or partition and create a new partition.

Choose the newly created partition as your install partition. Next choose the complete NTFS format option, and let it continue and reinstall windows xp and any other software you want on it.

Eric&Susan

That is exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks,

Eric

Nikolai

I know I'm late

dragon300zx wrote:

Ok there are two basic levels of clearing the hard drive.
...

But I pretty much second what Nick-The-Dragon has said

There is also a cheaper/faster way - clear cookies, delete the old user's account and this user's registry hive and Documents and Settings. It's not as clean as Nick's way, but it's way faster:-)

HTH

dragon300zx

Nikolai wrote:

But I pretty much second what Nick-The-Dragon has said

There is also a cheaper/faster way - clear cookies, delete the old user's account and this user's registry hive and Documents and Settings. It's not as clean as Nick's way, but it's way faster:-)

HTH

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Gary-the-dragon.... And that way can work if people use user accounts. Most people don't use user accounts and even if they do their main account is still typically the administrator account. And the administrator account doesn't go away, hence the reload being the fastest, easiest way.

Nikolai

Oops,

dragon300zx wrote:

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Gary-the-dragon....

Mea culpa, mea culpa...:uhoh

Scott_Quier

dragon300zx wrote:

Choose the newly created partition as your install partition. Next choose the complete NTFS format option, and let it continue and reinstall windows xp and any other software you want on it.

There are two options for formatting. One is the "quick" method. The other is the full or complete or something. Do NOT use the "quick" method. This leaves the data on the disk and just clears the master file table (the table of contents) on the drive.

dragon300zx

Scott_Quier wrote:

There are two options for formatting. One is the "quick" method. The other is the full or complete or something. Do NOT use the "quick" method. This leaves the data on the disk and just clears the master file table (the table of contents) on the drive.

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Actually..... Full still leaves the data on the disk and can be easily recovered. However it is very time consuming and most people don't know it can be done let alone how to do it. The only true complete way to wipe data from a disk is to do a low level format, repartition, high level format (full), and to be super anal and paranoid you do that whole procedure a couple times. That or you can just take the drive apart and use the disk's as frisbee's but well then the drive is no good.

PS your information on quick vs full is off.

"When you choose to run a regular (full) format on a volume, files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the majority of the time that it takes to format a volume.

If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged." - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 302686

A low level format removes all of your files from the drive, and writes 0's to the entire drive.

A regular format (full and quick) simply removes your files from the drive but doesn't reset it to all 0's which is factory condition. Seeing as all of the data on the hard drive hasn't actually been over written, it is easy to recover those files that were removed. However like I said before thats where you get into military type security, or normal security. How risky is your data if it falls into someone elses hands.

Xtopherous

Aside from the most typical ways of formatting and reinstalling an OS, if you're looking to wipe a drive clean with little hassle (and you have some time and enjoy overkill...), look to Darik.

dragon300zx

Xtopherous wrote:

Aside from the most typical ways of formatting and reinstalling an OS, if you're looking to wipe a drive clean with little hassle (and you have some time and enjoy overkill...), look to Darik.

From what I have read this is similar to do a low level format, partition, high level partition, reload, low level format, partition, etc etc etc, a few times. What it does is format the drive completely, then start rewriting sectors (switching from 0's and 1's at random) to overwrite all of the data that was on the drive, leaving it clean for you to repartition, high level format, and reload.

This is gonna be fun to play with

luke_church

Hi Eric,

Looks like you're covered by other stuff in this post.

However, if you want serious security against recovery then you need to do more than this.

Also be careful 'low-level formatting disks', some disks have servere issues with having it done to them and fail.

However no formatting provides a level of security against someone who really wants the data back. You get problems with partial overwrite (setting a bit to 1 or 0 only sets a fraction of the magnetic alignments, so the data history can be recovered), head misalignment (head alignment can be slightly different on each use, similarly resulting in a history), bit leakage (cells cross interfere with each other) etc. etc. etc.

If you want to deal with attacks like this, get a freeware tool or a Linux distribution specifically engineered for the purpose (DBAN springs to mind), this will write carefully selected bit patterns across the disk to maximise the disruption.

This can be cleansed to military standards, but it'll take a **long** time, and is probably overkill for your circumstances.

Personally I would run a fast over-write on the disk, and then format it. It'll almost certainly be fine.

If you're serious enough to believe that someone might wish to recruit a data forensics lab to get the data off the disk, then I would wipe it properly and then physically destroy it. If you're that serious the risk simply doesn't warrant the cost of a hard disk. But you probably have little reason to be that serious :

Luke

luke_church

dragon300zx wrote:

This is gonna be fun to play with

I thought it was more sophesticated than that? (I haven't used it for 2 years now and am relying on memory, so I'm probably wrong)

Certainly the tool I use at file level (which isn't DBAN), uses interference patterns, rather than just using psuedo-random data. There are a bunch of documents detailing the appropiate military standards, I don't think they'd be hard to get hold of.

Whilst amusing, all this is really only suitable for people handling very sensitive data. :

Luke

dragon300zx

luke_church wrote:

then I would wipe it properly and then physically destroy it. If you're that serious the risk simply doesn't warrant the cost of a hard disk. But you probably have little reason to be that serious :

Luke

Yup only true way is to destroy the disk. Which can be a whole lotta fun in and of itself.....

blackwaterstudio

format c:/

Nikolai

Does not always helps

dragon300zx wrote:

Yup only true way is to destroy the disk. Which can be a whole lotta fun in and of itself.....

Not so lng ago, just a couple of weeks before this year's shooout, I had to deal with a very bad data corruption. A/C went bad in a server room (tiny closet with a few dell racks) that was usually kept under 60.. Well, when servers stopped responding and IT opend the door it was well above 100, and servers essentially died of fever...:-(

Anyway, apart from other restorative measures, HDDs were sent to a recovery facility. Guys who did the delivery were given a tour. They said they saw HDDs smached with slegehammer; HDDs with the bullet holes; HDDs burnt down. And with all that damage the company was pretty confident that they will get most data back...

Of course, I don't think family albums and emails to Aunt Billy deserve that kind of destruction. I would simply delete the files, maybe override them with a few copies of c:\windows, but that's just me...:D