Any free method for permanently deleting old files?

993 Views 9 Replies 5 Participants Last post by sobeit, Jun 6, 2008

Alacres

Discussion Starter · Jun 5, 2008

Hey everyone, the title pretty much says it all.

I'm about to sell one of my computers (including the hard-drives with it) and since it's to a person that I don't really know personally, I wanted to make sure that I didn't have any important files lying dormant on my HDD. I've got tons of old family pictures, and more importantly, credit card information and such that I really don't want to pass along to someone else.

So basically, is there a free program or method for permanently deleting files to where it would be impossible to recover them (ie with a recovery program and the like)? I'd really like to do this, but I'd rather not shell out 30+ bucks for a program I'll probably only use once.

Thanks in advance for any advice :smile:.

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Richard

· #2 · Jun 5, 2008

Hi,
Try this free prog, well regarded from what I've read elsewhere:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Richard

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dai

· #3 · Jun 5, 2008

use killdisk
http://www.killdisk.com/screenshots.htm

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Alacres

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jun 5, 2008

Thanks a lot for the links

. I'm going with Killdisk, but I did have a question about it. I've been reading about the things that the free trial doesn't have compared to the full version, and I was wondering how important they were.

I'll list the things that aren't included with the free trial:

1.Erases with one-pass random characters
2.Erases with user-defined number of passes (up to 99)
3.US Department of Defense 5220.22 M compliant
4.German VISTR compliant
5.Russian GOST p50739-95 compliant
6.Gutmann method compliant
7.Customizable security levels
8.Data verification may be performed after erasing is completed

Is any of that really important? I mean, will not having those features mean that not everything will be deleted? Or is the free version enough to wipe everything clean?

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dai

· #5 · Jun 6, 2008

usually
but if someone is determind and has the equipment any hard drive can be recovered

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sobeit

· #6 · Jun 6, 2008

its the only real way of permanently deleting old files.

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Alacres

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 6, 2008

dai said:
usually
but if someone is determind and has the equipment any hard drive can be recovered

Arrg, that's not very comforting =/. I guess it would take some pretty serious equipment to do it though? Meaning I should still be fine to sell it?

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sobeit

· #8 · Jun 6, 2008

I was serious when I suggested destroying is the only real way to get rid of data. IMO, most likely you may not have anything to worry about but if you have anything on the drive that can get you arrested, extremely sensitive financial documents, confidential information, then you best destroy that drive. You never know what others may do with that drive.

I

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Lord Chaos

· #9 · Jun 6, 2008 (Edited)

dai said:
usually
but if someone is determind and has the equipment any hard drive can be recovered

it should be increasingly difficoult the more the data has been overwritten completely. Format it completely, then keep overwriting it with random 0's and 1's or just copy junk files all over it.

Should eventually be enough, but who's going to spend that much effort just to recover family pictures? Though your credit card information would be important.

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sobeit

· #10 · Jun 6, 2008

Lord Chaos said:
Should eventually be enough, but who's going to spend that much effort just to recover family pictures? Though your credit card information would be important.

the thing is, someone may run across an utility that would recover files and want to see what it does. Maybe they accidently deleted something and want to recover it and when using something, they may see something else of interest.

You never know what recovery technology there is out there or will be written later that could make it easy to recovery everything and everything.

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