PC experts - how do you delete your files for real?

[Intheether]

Before I return my laptop to my soon to be former employer, I want to be 100% sure all my personal stuff is gone. Anything short of breaking the laptop or ruining it's apps is fine. All suggestions are appreciated...

[ITGITC]

Astor, There is software that overwrites your hard disk with zeros. If you delete a file, you are deleting the reference to the file in the FAT (File Allocation Table) only. The data is still on the disk and, with the proper knowhow, can still be read. I've got some software from Fellowes called RealDelete Software (it came with a shredder I purchased some time ago. It claims to completely remove a file, including both the file's contents and the audit trail of the file. It also cleans the 'free space' on your computer's disk and can eliminate the file clusters and audit trails of files that have been previously 'erased'. It works on hard disks, floppy drives, Jaz and Zip drives running Windows 3.xx, Windows for Work Groups, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. It probably works with XP as well, but I have an older version. I don't know if utilities are available that you can download that will do the same thing. Do a search on [url=http://www.cnet.com]www.cnet.com[/url] or [url=http://www.pcworld.com]www.pcworld.com[/url] . Hope this helps!

[Gus Lozada]

Something simpler might be to delete everything, then run an application as NORTON UTILITIES WIPE DISK and SPEED DISK. It's gonna move everything and then make use of deleted files space.

[gtrmac]

Format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. That'll get rid of all those porn jpegs that you downloaded for sure!

[miroslav]

fdisk *.*

[Dylan]

I'd also recommend doing a clean renistall AFTER you've formatted the hard drive if you want to be absolutely safe.

[Alndln]

Find out your hard drive brand and download a utility that lets you do a low level format(0's),you don't have to pay for that.

[Rim]

Assuming a Microsoft OS: fdisk (it's menu-driven - search Microsoft's site on how to use it) format reinstall OS

[Alndln]

[quote]Originally posted by Rim: [b]Assuming a Microsoft OS: fdisk (it's menu-driven - search Microsoft's site on how to use it) format reinstall OS[/b][/quote]FDSIK doesn't include low-level format(format w/zero's) tools that I know of,and that's what he has to do.Anything else will leave the files hidden and accessible later.

[Matt.Hepworth]

There's a good program called killdisk. Very effective, but you'll lose all info on the drives.

[phaeton]

1. preheat oven to 400 2. Place drive in oven (shiny side down) on a greased cookie sheet, or other suitable non-stick bake pan. 3. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, testing for doneness with a tootpick in the center. 4. Remove from oven, and let cool on wire rack 5. Serves 1 Seriously, it's pretty difficult to *really* delete stuff, but it's pretty easy to make it so hard to recover stuff that it's not worth the effort. Recently, i sold a used 1Gb hard drive to someone. I cleaned it up by making a bunch of small partitions on it (at different offsets) and wedging a Slackware Base System (about 70mb) into each 80mb partition. Took a while, but it was fun to do. If you're looking at deleting your files, but don't want to disturb the OS, that might be difficult. The question might be if your employer will even look, how hard they will look, and how much they will care about what they might find.

[phaeton]

Of course, the best idea i've got yet, is you could send the laptop to ME. I can assure you they'll not find any of your personal files :wink:

[D. Gauss]

never under-estimate the power of urine! -d. gauss

[Dave Pierce]

Something like Norton's Wipe Disk is probably fine if you are sure you know which files to overwrite. Personally, I never fully trust anything short of a low-level repartition. For a Microsoft-based system, this means fdisk. * Create a DOS bootable floppy diskette * Copy fdisk.exe and format.exe to the diskette * Boot with the floppy in , run fdisk from the a: prompt I've oversimplified this a bit. If you truly need step by step instructions, there are probably good sources on the web. I've been doing this sort of thing for so many years that I often forget that I know things that I know. If you know what I mean. ;) --Dave

[techristian]

fdisk /mbr will even overwrite a virus in the Master Boot Record . Then PARTITION and format but remember that if you have more than 1 partition you may erase the entire DISK DRIVE (more than 1 partition) if you are not careful. Dan http://teachmedrums.com/videos.html

[Intheether]

If I take your suggestions, am I risking damaging the programs? The licence holder is my employer and I don't have the install discs. It's standard W2K, but there are bank only applications that I don't want to be responsible for destroying. My only personal files are Word, Excel and MS Project stuff....is there a way to just target those files...I don't care if work related files remain accessible. Thanks for your help, all!

[DanYmaL X]

Odds are real good that noone will dig deep, if there is nothing blatant up front... meaning if you remove any 'unauthorized' apps, through the add/remove programs utility, delete any erronious folders in: C:\ C:\Programs Files My Documents and anywhere your apps put folders... and then delete any excel, word etc. files you created, and after all that just empty your recycle bin, you should be OK. Unless your boss is planning to have a PC forensic expert go through the laptop, you'll be fine. (trust me, I do it all the time) DX

[Rim]

[quote]Originally posted by Alndln Hammer: [b] [quote]Originally posted by Rim: [b]Assuming a Microsoft OS: fdisk (it's menu-driven - search Microsoft's site on how to use it) format reinstall OS[/b][/quote]FDSIK doesn't include low-level format(format w/zero's) tools that I know of,and that's what he has to do.Anything else will leave the files hidden and accessible later.[/b][/quote]I'm not aware of a utility that can recover from an fdisk. If there is, I stand corrected.

[Rim]

[quote]Originally posted by astor*: [b]My only personal files are Word, Excel and MS Project stuff....is there a way to just target those files...I don't care if work related files remain accessible. Thanks for your help, all![/b][/quote]Formatting (low-level or otherwise) and FDISK will wipe out everything including the OS and all applications. It doesn't sound like this is what you want to do. Search all the local drives on the laptop for: *.doc for Word files *.xls for Excel files (I don't remember off-hand what the extensions for Project are but you get the picture.) To be on the safe side, open all the files you find to make sure it's yours. If you know it's yours, remove it. Otherwise, leave it be.

[phaeton]

Something else that occured to me, is they may just wipe and reinstall themselves anyways. I recall a lot of `office' jobs where there was an IT guy in the dungeoun of the building doing just that all day long. "Setting up a new system for a new employee" he called it. Basically meant backing up the data they cared about (insurance forms, work-related bookkeeping, ect) and re-installing the OS and apps. Even at such a `general' cover-up, it would take a great deal of effort to go rummaging around to find stuff, and you'd pretty much have to know what you're looking for too. I don't want to get personal, and you don't have to tell us, but what sort of data are you so concerned with them finding? Of anything, you won't be around to hear thier jeers. :oP They may have no interest in it anyways. Of course, you could *accidentally* forget to turn the laptop in, and/or *buy* it outright from them. Or break it. Seriously. I guess i'm not much help, as i've never thought long and hard on this type of dilemma before.

[not Cereal]

download and run some horrible virus. THAT would be funny! then they would HAVE to reformat it if you picked a bad enough one.

[gtrmac]

If you want to keep the applications and system intact thaere isn't much you can do to prevent forensic data recovery from finding your files. I would just delete the files in question and empty the trash. I doubt that anyone will go to the trouble of recovering your files unless they suspect you of international terrorism.

[Dave Pierce]

[quote]Originally posted by astor*: [b]If I take your suggestions, am I risking damaging the programs? The licence holder is my employer and I don't have the install discs. It's standard W2K, but there are bank only applications that I don't want to be responsible for destroying. My only personal files are Word, Excel and MS Project stuff....is there a way to just target those files...I don't care if work related files remain accessible. Thanks for your help, all![/b][/quote]If the IT department is run in a structured manner, they will be wiping it clean and re-installing everything anyway. But, fdisk will hose the whole system. I would just ask an IT guy. --Dave

[Dave Pierce]

[quote]Originally posted by Alndln Hammer: [b]FDSIK doesn't include low-level format(format w/zero's) tools that I know of,and that's what he has to do.Anything else will leave the files hidden and accessible later.[/b][/quote] [quote]Originally posted by Rim: [b]I'm not aware of a utility that can recover from an fdisk. If there is, I stand corrected.[/b][/quote]Well, you are both partially right, partially wrong. FDISK will destroy the operating system's partition tables, and the FAT. This pretty much makes all files, hidden or otherwise, completely inaccessible by any normal methods. There is definitely no "out-of-the-box" software that could read any file on that disk. However, the data that was in those files has NOT been completely overwritten, and a highly skilled forensic programmer could probably recover some, or even most of the data. This would be a ridiculously time-consuming task and would cost thousands of dollars. And the results are unpredictable. If you have government secrets on a laptop and plan to hand it over to Al-Qaida, you should probably do more than FDISK. If you are a regular person with personal files, FDISK is more than sufficient. --Dave

[gtrmac]

He can't fdisk, he doesn't have the system disk and the applications.

[Dave Pierce]

[quote]Originally posted by astor*: [b]Before I return my laptop to my soon to be former employer, I want to be 100% sure all my personal stuff is gone. Anything short of breaking the laptop or ruining it's apps is fine. All suggestions are appreciated...[/b][/quote]OK, we've given you advice all over the map here, haven't we? :D Let's start over: You have two basic choices: 1) Completely wipe out everything on the computer and then either: a) reinstall stuff or b) let the IT department worry about that 2) Leave the OS and Apps intact, and just find your files and delete them. Choice 1b is the way I would go. Here's why -- your IT department almost certainly has a mechanism in place to rebuild the OS and Apps on their laptops. I mean, what would they do if the disk died? (Happens all the time, BTW.) If they don't, they really need to look up the word "proactive". :D Choice 2 will be harder to identify all the files, but here's how I'd go about it. * IF you are certain that all your files were stored in a certain directory tree (like "My Documents"), simply delete that. IF not, then do the search for *.doc, *.xls, etc that someone else mentioned, and delete those files. * Empty any directory with the word TEMP in the name. * In IE, go to Tools, Internet Options. On the General tab, click "Delete Files" and "Clear History" * In IE, go to Favorites, Organize Favorites, and delete everything. * Empty the Recycle Bin. You'll probably miss some stuff this way. But it will get most of your stuff. Good luck! --Dave

[Danny M]

This is a very interesting topic, especially because something close to it was discussed on Slashdot a couple of weeks back. The really elite hackers (l33t h4x0rz) :D were talking about using PGP to write random data over entire hard drives multiple times, because even writing all zeroes wasn't enough. (Supposedly, the magnetic domains that were a "one" still have a little bit of extra strength left over. Of course, you'd need an electron microscope to find those domains...but hey, you never know which hard drives might be turned over to the aliens... :D ) I take it with a grain of salt, but it's still interesting. -Danny

[ITGITC]

Danny M is right. Under further investigation (I asked the computer-guy in my dept.) I have found that the Dept. of Defense does this same thing... They overwrite the disk with pseudo-random data instead of zeros. And they do it multiple times. He said that even if the first layer of data on the disk is wiped, one can still read multiple layers down - data that had been previously written. I did not know this! In lieu of this, as one poster said - never underestimate the power or urine!... or an ax or chainsaw. Yep, this is extreme, but for the DOD, this is what it takes!

[Rim]

Wow. This is just bringing out all the MP geeks! :) In the tech world, there are many ways to skin a cat and I've found each IT person thinks that their way is the right way. I'm no exception. ;) Astor, just check with your IT guys. If they're cool, they'll help you out. I had an ex-employee turn in his machine that was FDISK'd and it actually annoyed me because I now had to figure out stuff like the computer's name, NT domain, video card, NIC, etc. Although we usually re-format and re-install before handing it to the next person, we'd get all the info we need to make the re-install faster before we do anything. Also, the fact the user FDISK'd it, made me wonder if they were trying to hide something.

[Gulliver]

Astor, did you work on some X-Files secret project? ;) Just uninstall, remove, erase and delete all what you think do not belong to them and then empty the Recycle Bin. After you'll shut down the laptop no one will spy in its HDs next day unless she/he suffers under some hopeless Scully/Molder syndrome.