Safe format

[Evan]

1.) How many times would you have to hard format a computer disk for it to not be recoverable to anyone.

2.) To make a file not recoverable how many times do you have to overwrite it?


anyone have any documentation of this?

[Pirate]

1-I believe files will be unrecoverable after merging or resizing of partitions (or generally doing any operations on the MBR[Master Boot Record] )

2-If you delete a file out of your system (Shift+Del) , then do defragment , I think it would be difficult to recover the file .

[<ABX]

theres programs called file shredders that do this kind of thing.

click me for more info

or you could always use a good old fashioned hammer!

[dis1411]

if you really wanna go all out make sure the wipe info prog makes several sweeps... even though the disk or area may be set to all 0's there is technology available to analize the hard drive and guess at what used to be written on it

dont even think about using m$'s format.. use whats called a low level format like KillDisk

[parksie]

The only way that will totally prevent data recovery (we're talking by people with *lots* of money and resources to take the data off the disk) is total physical destruction

[Pirate]

And what sort of data that requires this kind of security !! .

[Lightning]

Do it simple, format the drive with another filesystem, the install Linux (a format-tool is included), then write a script that fills the entire diskspace with nonsens, then reformat your drive with FAT32 or NTFS, nobody gets your data back.

[parksie]

Nope. You can read the magnetism off the disk after a good number of rewrites

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Write random bits, as to 'neutralize' the magnetic field.

[The Hobo]

I usually emply sweet loving techniques to woo the drive into keeping all my secrets.