Anyway to erase EVERYTHING?

Exo

Exo

Member
I bought a used laptop from a co-worker of mine a couple days ago. My plans were to give this to one of my children. I reformatted and reloaded windows and all the drivers. Computer works great.

My question is this... In talking to the co-worker, I am sure he used the computer to access sites that I would not want my 11 year old son accessing.

Is there a way that I can wipe off ALL content of the computer so it can not be retrieved?

I know when you reformat, it still leaves behind material that others can see with the right knowledge. Anyway of removing everything?
 
Cromewell

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
In formatting it you are likely safe. I'm pretty sure your 11 year old isn't going to research and download the tools needed to recover from that. However, if you are really worried about it DBAN (suggested above) will make it virtually unrecoverable.
 
Exo

Exo

Member
Cromewell said:
In formatting it you are likely safe. I'm pretty sure your 11 year old isn't going to research and download the tools needed to recover from that. However, if you are really worried about it DBAN (suggested above) will make it virtually unrecoverable.
Click to expand...

Well true about the 11 yr old and his research. I just dont want anything to come back on him that he may have not done. So sounds like reformatting will be enough then.

If I ran DBAN, is there more that has to be done to get the computer up and running again? Is it like a reformat? Reinstall drivers and such?
 
Cromewell

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
It's basically a very throrough format (more to it than that, but in it's most simplified form that's what is going on). You have to reinstall the OS and all the goodness that comes with that.
 
M

Mishkin

New Member
If it's already been reformatted with a clean install and everything, I wouldn't worry about it. First off, I doubt your son would even think about let alone download and use a tool that could bring back some of the old traces of data. Secondly, I saw something mentioned about possibly getting in trouble for what your co-worker had on it? Aside from the fact that neither you nor your son is your co-worker, anything downloaded would also bring into play the ISP and/or IP address.

You're safe, unless your son has aspirations of being a hacker that you don't know about, and begins dabbling in stuff beyond games and music at the age of 11.
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
If he had child pornography on the hard drive I would completely wipe the whole drive. I would not want any remnants of that on the drive at all.

I highly recommend the program "Zilla Data Nuker." It is a program you can use with Windows.

I can e-mail you the installation file if you are interested. It is less than 3 megabytes in size.
 
K

Koffer

New Member
OvenMaster said:
Myself, I'd use Eraser http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ right-click the C: drive in My Computer, and then choose "Erase Unused Space" with three wipes. Done. Anything else has already been written over by files that presently exist.
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Even if you do write a new OS on top of old files, then the old files would still be up for recovery.. So your wiping method is not correct sir.
 
M

Mishkin

New Member
I agree with Koffer. It would be somewhat pointless to clean wipe the unused space on your hard drive, providing you also have a chunk that is currently filled up.

If you want to clean wipe, you'll want to do the entire drive. Multiple passes.
 
voyagerfan99

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
You could always run nCleaner and shred free space. But otherwise I wouldn't worry about anything.
 
OvenMaster

OvenMaster

VIP Member
Koffer said:
Even if you do write a new OS on top of old files, then the old files would still be up for recovery.. So your wiping method is not correct sir.
Click to expand...
Explain.
If the OS or programs overwrite deleted files, how are they still available? They are overwritten by new data.
Right-clicking a drive in My Computer and selecting "Erase Unused Space" will take care of everything else.
If the OP really wants to erase the risky files, he can select the unwanted files - individually or with Alt + click - then right-click them and choose "Erase"
 
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StrangleHold

StrangleHold

Moderator
Staff member
Koffer said:
Even if you do write a new OS on top of old files, then the old files would still be up for recovery.. So your wiping method is not correct sir.
Click to expand...

What about his post had anything to do with using the OS? His link was to Eraser.
 
L

larsch

New Member
Mishkin said:
It would be somewhat pointless to clean wipe the unused space on your hard drive, providing you also have a chunk that is currently filled up.

If you want to clean wipe, you'll want to do the entire drive. Multiple passes.
Click to expand...

After a format, all the old sectors which were oppucied by files are no longer referenced. Those files can be recovered, if not overwritten. A tool that overwrites unreferenced sectors will make the old and unreferenced files disappear.

Quick vs full format: Since Vista, a full format writes zeroes to all the sectors.
 
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M

Mishkin

New Member
larsch said:
After a format, all the old sectors which were oppucied by files are no longer referenced. Those files can be recovered, if not overwritten. A tool that overwrites unreferenced sectors will make the old and unreferenced files disappear.

Quick vs full format: Since Vista, a full format writes zeroes to all the sectors.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, if you want to software wipe (I mean the FBI or CIA is coming) WELL, you need to wipe the entire drive, and you need to wipe it at least several times using multiple passes. Wiping once (such as your format) with all zeroes -- I wouldn't trust whatsoever if the SHTF.

I personally have never clean wiped a HDD, have no need to, but do have an idea how to go about it. However, I don't know the extent of what is recoverable, what Big Brother has for recovery toys, and to what extent a software wipe (as opposed to thorough, physical destruction) would be considered safe. All I know is that from what I've read and heard, you want to wipe the entire drive, something to the tune of 7+ passes minimum. Now if you simply want to do a basic wipe, something to do so your girlfriend won't find pictures of your other girlfriend? -- sure a format would do great. A fully clean wipe where you don't want anything able to be recovered? No way in hell.
 
2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
Formatting a hard drive does not write zeros to the drive. It simply marks the written on space as free to write on to the operating system. You can format a hard drive 25 times and the data is still going to be there until it is overwritten by something else.
 
Cromewell

Cromewell

Administrator
Staff member
Mishkin said:
As far as I know, if you want to software wipe (I mean the FBI or CIA is coming) WELL, you need to wipe the entire drive, and you need to wipe it at least several times using multiple passes. Wiping once (such as your format) with all zeroes -- I wouldn't trust whatsoever if the SHTF.

I personally have never clean wiped a HDD, have no need to, but do have an idea how to go about it. However, I don't know the extent of what is recoverable, what Big Brother has for recovery toys, and to what extent a software wipe (as opposed to thorough, physical destruction) would be considered safe. All I know is that from what I've read and heard, you want to wipe the entire drive, something to the tune of 7+ passes minimum. Now if you simply want to do a basic wipe, something to do so your girlfriend won't find pictures of your other girlfriend? -- sure a format would do great. A fully clean wipe where you don't want anything able to be recovered? No way in hell.
Click to expand...

The only guaranteed way to stop someone with unlimited time and money is to open the thing up and incinerate the platters. That said, it's a little extreme situation for most of us.
 
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