Does re-formatting a hard drive really erase EVERYTHING?

Question

I know it gets rid of windows, but does it truly clear everything off of your hard drive,and make the data unrecoverable?

Answer 1

No. Some stuff will still be recoverable.

To make it so nothing is recoverable you need to overwrite all the information on the disk. The Department of Defense (DOD) requires 3 overwrite passes; the National Security Agency (NSA) requires 7 overwrite passes.

Wipe (overwrite) the drive use any of these three:
All data on the drive will be removed.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) free
http://www.download.com/Darik-s-Boot-and-Nuke/3000-2092_4-10165154.html
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61951&package_id=58479&release_id=439240
DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=194873&messageID=2115918
"You can find out the manufacturer of your HD and then attempt to download the formatting tool created by that manufacturer for their HD's. Most HD Mnufactuer have a Zero Fill Low level formatting tool available to erase their HD products. This will clean any existing OS files from your system as well as any viruses other files etc.."

Active@ Kill Disk - Hard Drive Eraser (Free version/ $29.95 enhanced version)
http://www.killdisk.com/
Active@ KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful and compact DOS software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.

Other Tricks

1) When you format enter "fdisk /mbr" to format the master boot record.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=49909&messageID=593967

To make files that have been previously deleted but not overwritten unrecoverable:

2) Install Restoration (free)
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,23108-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

Start Restoration > on menu "Others" > Delete completely > Yes >Yes
Will run for about 6 hours.
Then another menu will appear; click yes ; will run for a couple of minutes more and then be finished.

Overwrites all deleted files making them non recoverable. Does not overwrite Windows files, Programs files, or any other files.

Answer 2

Formatting erases the index of the files on the hard drive. The files would be easily recoverable using easy to get products like GetDataBack. Formatting erase the FAT for a drive (file allocation table). The FAT is an index that stores the name of a file and where it's located at on the hard drive. When your format a drive, you erase the FAT but the file itself is still on the hard drive. Files may be difficult to recover, especially if the file is broken up into pieces and stored in several places on the hard drive. If the file isn't too fragmented, it would be easily recoverable. If you need the files not to be recoverable, you need to download and use a disk wiping program which are also commonly available for free.

Answer 3

NO
Quickformat for example only remaps entries ,changing a bit from 1 to 0,so it appears empty.Almos any recovery program will recover the data from a quick format
Full formatting marks every cluster,however unless you copied new data on the hard drive,recovery also works.
Some programs,such as Active KillDisk do many formatting operations and put random data dozens of times on top of the old data,so it's pretty unrecoverable. There are some standards for data formatting,"goverment wipe" which makes the data truly unrecoverable .

Answer 4

Yes. When You Reformat Your Hard drive everything is erased.

Answer 5

Reformatting will clear the harddrive completely, but usually only single stamps it which means data recovery software may still be able to recover some data.

There is software available that overstamps around 7 times it takes hours but everything is tehn gone forever.

cheers
Gray

Answer 6

Traces of your old files will ALWAYS remain. I studied computer forensics and it what fairly easy to retrieve data from a reformatted HDD and from a "corrupted" one. So you are never safe when you reformat your hard drive.

Answer 7

YES

Nothing will be availabe when you format your harddisk.

Answer 8

Never thought too much about that

Answer 9

I think it depends