Do hard drive 'overwrite cleaners' really do what they claim?

Question

Do software programs that say their ware overwrites information content on the hard drive really work, or could a sophisticated forensic expert still find my private data if I sold my computer after doing a disk cleaning?

Answer 1

A competent hard drive 'overwrite cleaner' actually does make it so no information can be recovered. The reason there would be recoverable data is that if you delete something normally, to save time, the space on the hard drive is not blanked, only the flag that says "This file is right here." The other data just floats on the hard drive. It may be overwritten someday during the creation of new files, but it might stay there for a long time.

The hard drive cleaner software you are talking about goes through the hard drive and blanks each byte.

Answer 2

If you actually format your drive - you should be wiping it clean. Most people just install a new operating system on without a total "Format C" and repartition.

I would imagine that 3rd party software would work they way they say it does. Believe it or not, people buying a used computer can care less what your stuff was. I've bought 3 used computers and never had an inkling to see 'personal information'...

Answer 3

They do work... if they do enough overwrites. Good programs to several overwrites making the information impossible to recover. Like anything if you want it done well it will cost $ and take time.

Answer 4

what they do is rewrite over several times. Example you write a message and erase it. I can still see it or enough to get the meaning. But if i wrote over it and erase it several times, then you could not make heads or tails of what was written on the original note. Same with cleaners, more or less.

Answer 5

Simply formatting your hard drive is not enough to prevent recovery of lost data.

Most good wipe programs have the U.S. government standard for HD scrubbing set up as one of the options. That is generally good enough for them, and will probably work for you. Run it more than once, and you have a really scrubbed HD.

Answer 6

They generally do what they say. But if your nervous. You can manually trash it and buy a new one. They don't cost much. I've heard if you drive 4 holes through it with a drill it can't work anymore. Or you could hammer it.