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| Thread ID: 25858 | 2002-10-13 21:49:00 | Cleaning personal files off HD before selling | Veronika (2237) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 88945 | 2002-10-14 01:35:00 | Veronika, How sensitive are these files? :) Anyone buying the system can (if they know how and have the right software) find deleted files etc. - The only true safeguard against that is destroying the drive. But that said, it's incredibly unlikely that someone would go to all that trouble to gain access to your files, unless they know that there was previously highly-sensitive data on the drive and they buy it for the sole purpose of trying to retrieve it. A reformat and reinstall of Windows should be sufficient, unless it is highly sensitive information, in which case you should probably destroy the drive :) Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 88946 | 2002-10-14 02:42:00 | Or, better yet, if you're gonna get a newer PC, keep it and put it in as a secondary drive, you can use for backups or the like. If you're selling the PC, either sell it without the HDD, or pick up a second hand on for cheap, or even still, a new one for $120 for a 40GB. | Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 88947 | 2002-10-14 04:15:00 | The US military used to require driving a bulldozer over the drives, followed by fire (these were the disk drives the size of a refrigerator). Burroughs, although they didn't mind selling new disk drives, finally got them to agree to the "random data overwriting 7 times" method. It's possible to be too paranoid. Is it worth someone's time to recover the files? I once bought an ex-NZ Army Compaq AT. I had a look at the deleted files on the 20 MB disk. Databases of the hours "worked" by a service unit at Burnham. Boring :D No market vakue. :-( |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 88948 | 2002-10-14 09:29:00 | It is even possible to recover data from RAM that has been removed from the computer, power disconnected. In 36hrs time you can still get it back/ | -=JM=- (16) | ||
| 88949 | 2002-10-14 21:35:00 | WOW! I guess you DO learn something new everyday! Just a question: HOW? javoyle |
javoyle (2120) | ||
| 88950 | 2002-10-15 20:47:00 | BTW Veronica - all your notifications are bouncing back. Yahoo claims your email address is not valid. Bruce Forum Admin. |
Biggles (121) | ||
| 88951 | 2002-10-15 23:49:00 | > WOW! > I guess you DO learn something new everyday! > Just a question: > HOW? > javoyle grrrr, have to try and recall what I typed last time...... might have to adopt that CardFile thing everyone is on about. That was told to me by the Head of IT from Burnham Military Camp. He came to talk to the students at my college about IT careers in the Army. He mentioned that he was at a conference where they showed this happen. Though ofcourse the equipment required was rather expensive. It just goes to show that if you want something, you can get it. |
-=JM=- (16) | ||
| 88952 | 2002-10-17 10:51:00 | Try this programe it should do the trick. It's a shareware programe, free trial for 15 days. http://www.cyberscrub.com |
Caro (562) | ||
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