i'm selling my laptop but i have alot of financial data on it. i am self employed so i have alot of company info such as finances, bank details, employee information on it and i dont want any of it getting into the wrong hands. any suggestions of what programs can completely wipe my hard drive so nobody could ever find this info. any help would be awesome!
2007-08-19 04:29:54 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Security
Don't trust that Eraser or a reformat will make data unreadable. I've used Eraser and was able to recover quite a bit of data later, although some of it was unreadable via the monitor screen. I've also done a reformat and found a lot of stuff still there. I don't think there's anything on the market available to consumers that will completely erase everything. If there were, I'm sure the authorities would be working hard to get it taken off the market. Your best bet is to remove the drive.
2007-08-19 05:50:42 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Pretty good. It can be set to overwrite the data up to 35 times with random bytes. The US dept of Defence only asks for 5 passes I think. Of course there is no way you can check if a forensic specialist could still recover anything. I assume that you aren't such a specialist as you are asking the question. Of course the ultimate 110% secure way is to replace the drive with a new one and use the old one as an external drive in your new laptop's usb port. That way your files are secure and easily available.
2007-08-19 04:41:29 · answer #2 · answered by The original Peter G 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
yeah I've heard it pretty secure . don't format that won't help unless you've "shredded" all your documents first.
This is what I would do shred all my docs with eraser then format .if you are still unhappy and feel insecure about this , another option is to buy another hard drive for your notebook and destroy or keep in safe place your old one they ain't that expensive anymore.A bit drastic I know but it is an option. It all depends on how sensitive you docs are and what you are willing to go thru to protect your data.
2007-08-19 05:00:35 · answer #3 · answered by Catfan 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Eraser 5.8
2016-12-14 12:26:54 · answer #4 · answered by campbel 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No software made for the public will 'completely' erase files of your HDD. Data will always linger on there, whether it is visible or not. Proffessionals are trained in labs to retrieve, what you thought, was lost data
2007-08-19 04:38:23 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
Reformat the Hard Drive.
2007-08-19 05:28:16 · answer #6 · answered by Ricky B 6 · 0⤊ 3⤋
Realistically your only option is to remove the hard drive.
2007-08-19 05:28:32 · answer #7 · answered by D G 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
im not great with pc's but maybe you could format the hard drive, its pretty simple to do and that should get rid of everything on it
2007-08-19 04:36:26 · answer #8 · answered by bigsexydug 4 · 0⤊ 2⤋
dismantle it and burn it
2007-08-19 05:46:18 · answer #9 · answered by ptrcknicol 2 · 2⤊ 1⤋