Will Formatting Permanently Erase My Hard Drive?

Selling, recycling, or giving away your old computer? Wondering if simply formatting data will permanently erase your hard drive? Simply formatting data on a hard drive and erasing it is not enough internet security. You need to use disk deleting software to permanently erase data and files on your hard drive.

You can spend countless hours going through your hard drive and deleting all the files and y documents you want. Using your "delete" key on your keyboard in Windows unfortunately basically only removes the shortcuts to the files making them invisible to users. Deleted files still reside in your hard drive. They can easily be recovered using data recovery software, readily available for download on the Internet.

While formatting a hard drive is a little more secure than simply erasing the files, it does not permanently erase the actual data on the disk. Formatting a hard drive only erases the address tables. This makes it much more difficult to recover the files. However, a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all of the data that was on the disk before reformat, using data recovery software. This is wonderful if you have accidentally reformatted a hard drive. On the other hand though, it is not good if you're selling, recycling, or giving away your computer. With your computer in th wrong hands, crooks could steal your identity. This could lead you to becoming the next victim of identity theft, one of the fastest growing crimes in Canada and the USA.

Here's a bit of "food for thought". In 2003, two MIT students purchased 138 used disk drives from various locations. They found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, deleted personal and corporate financial information. On top of this the two students found several gigabytes of personal email and pornography on those disks.

To securely erase data and files from your hard drive you need to use a process called disk wiping. This is a secure method of ensuring that data on your computer and other storage devices is permanently deleted. To permanently and securely erase data on your hard drive you need to use disk deleting software, also known as file wipers, shredders, and wipe programs. It is good to know that there is free disk deleting software for download on the Internet.

Disk deleting software overwrites your hard drive with 0's or random patterns. This makes it virtually impossible to recover data and files on your computer using data recovery software.

Apparently, according to an article I read in PC World, some hardware can recover data that has been written over once or twice. That is where secure delete standards, such as the Department of Defense 5220.22-M, comes into play. This specification states that overwriting the drive sector three times with specific, different characters constitutes one pass. Seven such passes are recommended by many Internet security experts to make the data completely unrecoverable.

It is reassuring that to read data overwritten by even the simplest disk deleting software requires expensive hardware to recover, so only the most determined professional sleuth would be able to recover your data.

Erase a Hard Disk Drive Permanently - How

A hard disk drive also known as hard drive or hard disk is a non-volatile storage device, which has the facility to stock up digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters and magnetic surfaces. Its design consists of a spindle which can hold one or more flat circular disks known as platters, onto which the data is recorded. It has the ability to store data more than floppy disk drives and can also access and transmit data at faster pace. Today, the boost in disk space and access speeds of hard disk drive have further facilitated the marketable viability of clients products that need great storage capacities, like digital audio players and video recorders.

However, the main problem that we are coming across is erasing data or files from hard disk permanently. Most of us think that erasing files and emptying the Recycle Bin will help in permanently get rid of those files. In fact, in most of the cases Recycle Bin tells that emptying the Recycle Bin will permanently remove items. But this statement is totally incorrect. You have to understand even after emptying the Recycle Bin, the files can be easily recovered by data recovery programs. Making the best use of delete key on actually removes the shortcuts to the files and makes them undetectable to users. Deleted files still reside on the hard drive and a rapid Google search will automatically show options for system recovery software will further allow to restore that data.

Apart from erasing the files or data from hard drive, many people also consider that the effective way to erase hard drive data is by formatting the hard drive. Though formatting the hard drive is somewhat secure than just erasing the files, but you should also note that formatting a disk does erase only the address tables. It makes it much more difficult to recover the files. However a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk before the reformat.

Disk Wiping is the next new technique that is gaining its popularity these days. Disk wiping is a new secure method and ensure that data, including individually licensed softwares on your computer and storage devices is irrecoverably deleted before recycling. Disk wiping is better method in comparison to erasing files or formatting the hard drive, because this method basically overwrites your entire hard drive with data, several times and once you format your hard drive, you may find it impossible to get back the data which was present on the drive before the overwrite.

Though disk wiping algorithms vary from product to product, they usually write the entire disk with a number (zero or one) and then a reformat is required. Today, there are many products available in the market that you can purchase or download to perform secure disk wipes.

Moreover, the two free programs that are gaining recognition for erasing data from your hard drive are:

(1) Darik's Boot and Nuke: This is an application that you can install on a bootable floppy or CD Rom. Boot and Nuke uses several methods to wipe the data on your drive to an unrecoverable state. With the facility to delete the contents of any hard disk that it detects, makes this application a suitable utility for urgent situation data destruction.

(2) Eraser: This is next famous software and does a great work of cleaning your hard drive by removing all magnetic and solid state memory. It is an advanced security tool, which further allows you to entirely remove sensitive data by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

Now once one of these procedures is completed the drive is ready to be given away without fear of privacy invasion or fraud. These tools provide full confidence about your deleted sensitive personal information that is unrecoverable. In addition to this it also provide easy to comprehend and secure and affable graphical user interface GUI for permanent data removal.

Finally if you are still uncertain or want to ensure that deleted files are permanently gone, employ a file deletion management system. Today there are many file deletion programs designed to spot and permanently purge your computer of previously deleted files. These solutions initially scan a computer, find traces of previously erased data and finally remove discarded data including e-mail messages.