formating advice

-TangleFoot-

timberflake wrote:

But when you delete the partition and format the drive your not just formatting part of the drive, your formatting the WHOLE drive.

The Wikipedia article on data remanence says otherwise.

Simply removing pointers to a file, which is all that occurs when a file is deleted in most operating systems, will not generally render the previous information unrecoverable through normal system capabilities. Likewise, reformatting, repartitioning, reghosting or reimaging a system is not guaranteed to write to every area of the disc, even though it will cause the disc to appear as empty to most programs.

Thus, I too would recommend DBAN.

wildheart_2

formatting does nothing more than mark blocks ready for use it wipes nothing.i have used programs like get data back to retrieve my music and data after a full format and the progarm states it can reclaim data from up to 3 or four formats ago.

Blacksheep1979

timberflake wrote:

But when you delete the partition and format the drive your not just formatting part of the drive, your formatting the WHOLE drive. IMHO, a clean reinstall is the only way to be confident you've deleted eveything and got a clean slate.

As wildheart says the blocks just get marked as free and if windows installer does the inteligent thing it will install at the start of the hard drive and use consecutive blocks - and will do the same thing every time. This will leave all your data on blocks that are marked as available but with no actual new data writen to them and therefore recoverable.

theboylard

As has been said it is relatively easy to recover some files from a disk, done it a few times and have loads of recovery tools that I've never needed.

Reinstalling windows, deleting/creating partitions, formats etc does not delete anything, it just tells the system that there is free disk space

The only, definite, positive, 100% sure method to ensure your disk does not give anything away, bearing in mind a new 160GB hard disk is only around £35, is as per Chrith:

Take the drive out and smash it with a hammer, a lot.

hapless

computerwoman

I dont think you can truly wipe a HD even when I use fdisk then format c: it always has a alittle bit left, these are platelets like sheets of metal one on top of each other, so I dont think you can truly get rid of everything, do you really need to sell your other one, can you not keep it as a spare, or second laptop, it might come in handy if your new one ever goes wrong, or think about putting a new HD in it, thats the only way I know, if it were me I would put a new HD in before I sold it.

millwalll

thanks for all the advice i could buy new hard drive but the laptop not in that good condition so don't want spend £40 on new hard drive and it sell for £50 but i think i will use albertross method where i overwrite it 7 times then i will format the whole drive and i am selling it with out no os system as i got it with windows 95 that well old now thanks for all the advice

computerwoman

you could put a cheap copy of linux on it they range from around 99p up wards, https://www.tuxdiscs.com that way you could ask a desent price for it with an OS

theboylard

Or download most flavours of linux for nowt?

Most distributions offer a free download of the latest stable build.
Personal favourites are Kubuntu (Ubuntu but with the full kde front end), Xandros and Knoppix.

-TangleFoot-

theboylard wrote:

Personal favourites are Kubuntu (Ubuntu but with the full kde front end), Xandros and Knoppix.

Xubuntu or Damn Small Linux might be more appropriate for a computer that was formerly home to Windows 95...

theboylard

-TangleFoot- wrote:

Xubuntu or Damn Small Linux might be more appropriate for a computer that was formerly home to Windows 95...

True, Xandros can be heavy on resources but for those worried by the move to Linux it is extremely windows-like.
I still stand by Knoppix though as that is a fairly light install.

hapless