Page 1 of Deleting sensitive items from my hard drive?

Got a few things on my hard drive that won`t respond to being put in the recycle bin.

What program can I get to delete these?

Thanks in advance. 8)

You could try deleting them from the command window .. Start> Run> type "cmd" then browse to folder and delete the files the old DOS way i.e. del file.name.

Sam.

Cheers Sam, I`ll try that.

Gawd, its been years since I was messing about with CMD prompts in DOS. ;)

Didn`t you used to have to use `deltree <filename>` when deleting in DOS?

This item was edited on Saturday, 29th October 2005, 20:57

Try CyberScrub Privacy Suite (trial download, easily circumvented ;)

It wipes files permanently so they can`t be recovered, and if you have those stubborn files that won`t budge it will get rid of them too (requires restart).

_____________________________________________________

been using it for years . Recommended!

My DVD collection




67suissac[at]moc.tenretnitb/cassius76.html" target="_blank">JamesL

There is no software available that permanently wipes files from a hard disc. Data from a hard disc can be recovered (even if formatted thousands of times) although at a cost so if the files are of a very sensitive and secret nature then to guarantee destruction of the files then this requires destruction of the hard drive by physically opening it and burning the platters - this is what they do in military establishments.

Any budding Gary Glitters out there should beware because the police CAN recover the data.

This item was edited on Monday, 31st October 2005, 22:33

I thought the Peter Guttman method of deletion (magnetic etc.) was totally secure? Even for Magnetic force microscopy (MFM)
Or as secure as it can be without physical destruction.
I didn`t think data could be recovered from that method of deletion.

Ste

There is such a thing as magnetic history. Traces of magnetic patterns can be read from electron microscope. I doubt Mr Gutman`s theory or whatever will 100% wipe a hard disc.

Actually, I`m quite interested in this Mr Guttman`s theory. Can you tell me what it is?

This item was edited on Monday, 31st October 2005, 23:07

Mike,

The Guttman method doesn`t use magnetic forces to wipe the hard disc. It uses a pseudo random method of overwriting the hard disc but Peter Guttman himself admits "it is effectively impossible to sanitise storage locations by simple overwriting them, no matter how many overwrite passes are made or what data patterns are written".

Yes you are correct in that the more times the disc is overwritten the more tricky it is to recover the data and therfore costlier but magnetic force microscopy can be used to recover data.

I didn`t think it was a magnetic form of deletion - it sounded too strange but was interested to hear about it if it was. That`s why I said it was a theory or algorithm and as believed, it will not wipe the hard disk 100% and the data is recoverable.