I would really like a fresh start with my computer, it has been infected by a couple of viruses/malwares in the recent past, and I am afraid to go back to doing online banking, etc. on it. I haven't changed much on this pc since I bought it, so I think formatting the drives is not that big a deal for me. However, I heard that formatting your drives doesn't really wipe them clean, and that the original data is still retrievable. What can I do to REALLY erase everything and start all over?
2007-02-15 16:05:45 · 7 answers · asked by Bia 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
If you are only worried about bugs and viruses then reformatting will work just fine. If you are worried about personal info left on the disk the you should get a program that completely wipes the hard drive clean. A good place to get this software is pcworld .com. Do a search for "clean hard drive and see what is available. Sounds like in your case a simple format and re-install of Windows would do the trick. Good luck.
2007-02-15 16:42:42 · answer #1 · answered by Don R 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
No, a "recovery" CD boot/installation will not wipe your hardrive, it will simply do a comparison between what is on the CD and the HD and "restore to factory settings" by adding missing information from the CD to the HD.
Since any magnetic media will hold a residual charge, there is a possibility of recovering deleted information from the area of the media. [When you delete something in an OS, the OS simply thinks of that area of the disk/media that the information was on as usable by any new data it might need to store on the HD. It does not erase the area of the disk/media.] To truly, technically wipe a harddrive, there are industrial-strength programs available. What these do is simply write all 0s to all the sectors of the disk, then go back to beginning and write all 1s, then repeat the process a couple times. It is a long, tedious and boring process.
However, if you think you have a virus file that no anti-virus software can effectively remove, you can simply try to find a program called "fdisk" and use it to reformat the full hardrive after removing any partition. Another option is to use a bootable CD copy of Windows [or other OS such as Linux] and boot up from the CD and under the installation options remove all partitiions and format the hardrive before installing the OS. Both the fdisk and OS options require that you go into BIOS settings and make sure you boot from CD first and not the HD.
The problem with most recovery CDs is that even though you can boot from them, they don't do a full and complete format before they "fix" or "restore" your system.
2007-02-16 09:56:03 · answer #2 · answered by quntmphys238 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you want to make sure that information is not retrievable from your drive then you should make sure that the drive is not able to turn. The government puts 5 drill hole through the drive to ensure it can not be read. I can retrieve data from computers that have been reloaded up to 4 times. What you need to ask yourself is Am i going to give this computer away? Is there anything in the system that is really worth the effort that it would take to recover? Most people do not know how to recover. Personally I would be more worried about someone stealing my identity on line via mall ware or Trojans and viruses. Most people do not understand what these programs are designed for. Just last week I got a computer in that was SO badly infected that it had 4 Trojans, and a key logger that sent collected info to a hacker message board from Russia.
Good rules to follow.
1. always run virus protection Try AVG anti virus. It is free.
2. Run Spy ware protection. Try Spy bot. It is free
3. For maintenance I use Ccleaner Again Free.
4. If you are going to do a fresh install then get a copy of Norton Ghost and make a drive image so you can restore when ever you need to.
2007-02-16 02:45:49 · answer #3 · answered by dcs997 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The data is only retrievable by specialized hardware and software tools.
Go ahead, reload your machine and don't worry about the viruses you might have once had. They won't be there when you reload.
If you really want to wipe the drive absolutely clean, there are tools that can do that as well. http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ is just one of the many drive erasers available and its free.
2007-02-16 00:13:28 · answer #4 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yeah you hear correctly, I don't know exactly how to solve you problem the best solution I can offer it to reinstall your windows. Even that though is a second best solution, I know when I got a virus on my computer I spent like 2 hours on the phone with a 'tech' from dell with him feeding me different codes and entries for 2 hours to completely wipe out everything from the hard drive.
2007-02-16 00:14:51 · answer #5 · answered by Alex 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, formatting does not totallly erase you drive, but retreavel programs are very expensive, and unless your trying to hide criminal activities, no one is going to going to want to do it. If you are really concerned, you can buy programs that use the military method to erase a disk
2007-02-16 00:44:04 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
put your RECOVERY DISC IN>REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER. and viola everything is gone and you start from scratch..
2007-02-16 00:12:56 · answer #7 · answered by czechmate_147 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋