know how to erase hard drive for free??

**hitman2242** · 08-23-2002, 02:32 PM

hey

i was reading a thread, on a site that cleans your harddrive for free... if anyone knows this please inform me of this...

**Buddha_Red** · 08-23-2002, 03:08 PM

what the site does is it cleans your cookies,temp internet files,history ect.

you can do it all manually if you like, its a simple matter of just finding and erasing all "evidence"

what questions did you have?

**smallmovesal** · 08-23-2002, 04:36 PM

magnets and bacon work wonders i hear

***Cycleon*** · 08-23-2002, 05:49 PM

you can always reformat it - reinstalling windows and wiping it at the same time - do that 2x and you should be good to go.

**Full Intensity** · 08-23-2002, 07:03 PM

Originally posted by CYCLEON
you can always reformat it - reinstalling windows and wiping it at the same time - do that 2x and you should be good to go.

i do that about 1 to 2 times a year! Maybe thats why i go through soo many drives LOL

**EXCESS** · 08-23-2002, 09:20 PM

Paint thinner works well.

**adaptations** · 08-23-2002, 09:23 PM

format c:\

thatll do it for you

**Buddha_Red** · 08-23-2002, 10:33 PM

actually if you want to completely make a hard drive clean you need to repartition it. (fdisk) but you would have to be really worried to go that far.

you can still recover info after a format if you know what your doing.

**clockworks** · 08-23-2002, 11:52 PM

Originally posted by Buddha_Red
you can still recover info after a format if you know what your doing.

hmm. don't most formatting programs zero out the sectors? if they do, you can't recover. =)

-clocky baby

**Buddha_Red** · 08-24-2002, 03:26 AM

format c: does not protect you from the fbi or other agencies being about to recover your information.

its way to early, but in college i had an extremely lengthy discussion about it.

High level format is doing format c: to a hard disk.
High level formatting creates a file system within a partition of a hard disk or on a floppy. This process writes the initial version of the boot record, root directory and file allocation table (FAT).

A high-level format creates a new FAT and scans the surface of the disk, finding and marking damaged sectors (those corrupted files).

with programs such as nortons unformat it is possible to recover most of the data believe it or not.

I think you are thinking of a low level format which, indeed does destroy the data.

now the average computer nerd probablly wont find your data after you have done format c:, but what i am saying is there are ways if someone wants to get it back.

low level formatting and fdisk are the only ways i know to totally "safe" a disk. i would only really worry about doing that if i was going to sell my system.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/prin...d,13859,00.asp

***Sicilian30*** · 08-24-2002, 09:43 AM

Buda is correct, low level formating write's binary 0's to all sectors of the drive, takes about 6 freaking hours to do it, but that is the only safe way to completely delete info. Even with an fdisk with the right kind of tools you can recover data. I don't want to go into a long drawn out boring discussion on how the mechanics of HD's work, therefore, I will put it in Layman's terms.
If you fdisk or format a drive, the image of the data that was once there is still there in theory. It is only until new data starts to be written to the drive itself will start to be completely erased. I have recovered data from drives that have been fdisked using special programs (programs you dont' find in Office Depot or Best Buy, let me tell ya). If you perform a low level format, that is the only way to ensure that the data on the drive is not recoverable. You can usually find these low level formating tools on manufacturer's websites, such as Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate and so forth. Not at Office Depot or your local computer store.
Now to get back to your question, if you are alooking for a way to clean your history files, internet files and so forth, there are a few good programs out there (granted you can do this all yourself if you know how). I use Xcleaner for one, it can be found here: http://www.meso-rx.com/links/privacy.htm
There is a link to directly download the product and a few more useful tools on this site.
I of course have some "special" tools that I can't share with everyone that work better for the things I do, but that will be discussed later. LOL.
BTW this site has a few good tools I like to use like pop up stopper, and Zone Alarm, you can find all these products at their respected websites, but I like this site because it has them all linked up for you!

**palme** · 08-24-2002, 09:50 AM

I said this before, it dosnt mather if you remove the cookies they can always check what sites your ** has been connected to etc. Emails can be traced back for years. Same with SMS.