how trustworthy are wiping hard disk programmes?

Answer 1

It depends what you are trying to wipe and what software you are using. there are good ones such as Blancco for instance but this could be overkill unless you are planning on selling your computer or hard drive

Answer 2

Some and some, you need the MOD approved ones if you can find them, an absolute guarantee. A hard drive is like a lot of little magnets which hold charge it is the combination of held charge or no held charge which makes up data. Ordinary wiping gets rid of a bit of the charge but a smaller level remains and can be read if you look at a lower than standard level of charge. the more the disk is wiped and re written the more of the old data charge gets lowered until finally it is below such a level that it cant be read. MOD standard disk wipes do multiple wipes and rewrites and a verification check. Just reinstalling over the top of a hard drive, can leave many areas of the disk untouched and therefore is not reliable at all. Drilling a hole through it will not wipe all the data nor will fire flood etc. a friend of mine was a data recovery specialist and he has got partial retrievals from really mashed up hard drives.

Answer 3

If you have Windows XP, you already have a disk cleaner & defragmenter in ALL PROGRAMS menu > Accessories > System Tools. I used the Disk cleaner to compress little used files and freed up quite a bit of space on the C drive. My PC seems to run a bit smoother.The Defragmenter will gather up scattered parts of a program & put it in one place, thereby speeding up things when you want to bring up a certain program or file, because it hasn't got to search all over for the fragmented pieces of that program, since it is now all together. So, you need not download anything. Just use the reliable one you have, the disk cleaner being the one to try first. Do not have any programs running, nothing, just your desktop showing. Hope this is helpful.

Answer 4

Hello,

(ANS) Hard disk wiping programs CAN BE pretty good if you use the right ones. I use a freeware program called "Eraser" why? is this program so powerful. Well it uses a variety is methods (techniques) from the most basic to the most sophisticated to destroy any possibility of undeleting any old data left on the hard drive. Eraser uses military & government (CIA) level methods to overwrite the old data with random bits bytes & characters. At the most basic level the data is only overwritten x2 but the most powerful method uses overwriting x27 times which means nobody can ever retrieve it, or undelete it. It means that even the police or phorensic data mining methods WONT work, bit map level data retrieval wont work either. Eraser is extremely powerfull.

You can find a free copy of Eraser at http://www.snapfiles.com (see freeware section)

or http://www.webattack.com

IR

Answer 5

Very if they use standard over writing techniques. Just deleting the file structure isnt enough. The programs that overwrite a file 5-7 times are the most secure. One example program is http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ Look at the types of overwriting techniques mentioned on links on this page

Answer 6

http://www.sys-shield.com - AbsoluteShield File Shredder
This is the free for home use version of a program used by companies to wipe their hard drives before they get rid of them.
It overwrites the drive about 20 times using a specific pattern of data to erase the info. Then you can use file recovery software to check it really has gone.

Answer 7

If you're getting rid of you hard disk and want to be secure...drill a hole all the way through, there is no way to completely delete everything that has ever been on there