Deleting hard drive without recovery?
December 7th, 2008 | by admin |
I recently sold my computer through an auction site. Before it was sold I formatted the drives, then ran clean disk security (a hard drive deleter) many times (over 35 passes I believe). I then tested it to see if I could recover any files with programs I got over download.com and retrieved nothing. Tested it by deleting a file, then ran the recovery programs, and that file showed up; ran clean disk security and i could no longer recover it.
Would you say that my personal information is safe from the person I sold it to? Would there be any way for them to realistically retrieve my old files? Such as taking it to a data recovery center or tech support guys. Or do these cleaners really knock everything out?
Note: I remember finding something on the drive though – it was a folder of zeros that werent very big in file size.
Robert – yes, it’s already gone.
Adnan – so data recovery centers should be able to retrieve the files even though the drives free space was over written after formatting? I know it’s probably unlikely that the buyer would get data recovered for that price, but still knowing that all of my conversations with loved ones, credit card information and account passwords are there it makes me uneasy. My life was on that computer.
RC – how sure are you of that?
How do I securely delete my entire hard drive with no possibility of recovery?
4 Responses to “Deleting hard drive without recovery?”
By Robert on Dec 9, 2008 | Reply
hm i think you got everything out of there, but did you already give it to the guy?
By Adnan Sallam on Dec 10, 2008 | Reply
You said you formatted the drive, that will clean it. about data recovery, yes some places can recover data, most data recovered is corrupted some are good it come up under different name but recovering data is very expensive unless the person who bought your system needs your files badly to spend hundreds of dollars recovering them,that’s other question.
By RC Collns on Dec 11, 2008 | Reply
The same question you erase vcr tape or vcr tapecassette tape when asked him the old song you are asking he works the same way close friend who works for the same question you erase vcr tapecassette tape or listen to retrieve it would it would it.
By relequestual on Dec 14, 2008 | Reply
The gov or something really cant see it happening though you could always replace the hard disk and ship.