Deleting Windows

[REDDFOX321]

I just purchased yet another computer to replace the OLD one in the living room. My question to you is how do I remove Windows and my Information from that computer. I thought about installing evidence eliminator but it doesnt look feasible because of the 4GB I have on the disk and 66mhz clock speed. The OS is Windows 95. Thanx

[el-half]

Just reboot in MS-DOS and type format c:
But this will not delete all your data, your data will still be recoverable with special software.
The data is just marked as "ready to get overwritten".

[jm459]

Originally posted here by REDDFOX321
I just purchased yet another computer to replace the OLD one in the living room. My question to you is how do I remove Windows and my Information from that computer. I thought about installing evidence eliminator but it doesnt look feasible because of the 4GB I have on the disk and 66mhz clock speed. The OS is Windows 95. Thanx

Depends on what you want to do with your old computer, and or hard drive.
Are you scapping it?, Reuse with different O/S or giving the computer to someone? Do you require your data to be saved etc, etc. If you could be a bit more specific, this would enable the most appropriate options / advice to be given

[whizkid2300]

Ok you can format c: but after you format reinstall windows from scratch and that should delete all your info from it. I am pretty sure that will work or you could just destroy your registry and reinstall it that will make so that noone will be able to do anything to the old windows and data.

Whizkid2300

[jinxy]

Best to use fdisk first to delet the partition then create a new partion then format. You will nead a boot disk though you can create one on the machine beforhand if you don't already have one.

[noODle]

If you want to shred you data practicly irecoverable you might want to take a look at the site of your HD's manufacturor. There are usually utilities on the site that will allow you to do a low level format (llf). This will make the date not revoverable for most users.
However, if you want to hide you data from (say) the FBI you might want to do a LLF and then install linux, once again llf, install Windows (repeat).

Cheers
noODLe

[valhallen]

Ok you can format c: but after you format reinstall windows from scratch and that should delete all your info from it. I am pretty sure that will work or you could just destroy your registry and reinstall it that will make so that noone will be able to do anything to the old windows and data.

yup might tke someone with a little computer knowledge oh 20mins to recover it then
to make sure your data is non-recoverable you need to over-right it not once but 26 times (according to NSA guidelines)
most shredder programs will do a fairly good job but your HD contents will still be recoverable to the experts...but if you are only formatting to give to a freidn/relative etc they aint going to have the ability's that the NSA have so your prolly fine to use no0dles suggestion

v_Ln

[whizkid2300]

Damn I didn't know 26, I knew that it was recoverable. I just thought that it was going to be a little bit hard to get to it that way. Now I got a question do you even have anything on there that is sensitive. If not it doesn't matter.

I do think that you could just do it the easy way.

Here goes I will give you a quick tutorial on doing it the really easy way.


Go to the trunk of your car or where ever you keep your tools open up your PC case



and start to beat the living sh.. out of it destroy every last chip them fill you bathroom tub with water drop it all in there and there you go. No more problems. LOL

whizkid2300

[nihil]

There are plenty of free programs that will overwrite your data..try "Eraser5.4" or something like that.

If you search the Net there are many other products that wipe drives. You may also look for security articles by a gentleman called Gutmann. He recommends overwriting 32 times. You also need to overwrite the cluster heads/tips? and freespace, which may contain residual data. The Windows swapfile/pagefile also contains a lot of potentially sensitive data, so you need to destroy that also( look for a program called "scorch").

I have worked in the defence industry for a number of years and we always physically destroy drives that have contained sensitive data.

For all practical purposes, once something has been overwritten between 3 and 7 times, it will NOT be recoverable. This should be adequate for ordinary personal data etc. Last time I checked out data recovery from a damaged drive I was quoted $10 per megabyte ( and that was unencrypted, regular data), so you have to cosider if it would be worth anybody's time and money....$40,000 for your old drive...

Whoever wanted to recover data that has been overwritten will have to have access to a "clean room", an electron tunnelling microscope and all the other goodies.....they are NOT cheap!!! neither are the people who know how to use them.

The principles involved are "track offset" (the heads don't exactly write into the same place on the drive when you overwrite), and "magnetic remnance" (overwritten data remains as a faint magnetic trace). You might like to check out these two topics?

If you want to be sure, wipe you drive as suggested above, then put in your deep freeze for 48 hours ...........that will alter its crystalline structure, and should defeat any attempt at data recovery. It will also trash the drive, though.

Hope that this helps and gives you a few leads for further research.

[humpy]

Thats a most interesting reply nihil, this is a a topic that is raised most often, and I must say the answers that are given vary quite considerably.

I've read/heard that data can be recovered using Scanning Electron Microscopes and I'd be really interested in seeing a magnified close-up of a hard-drive (I should do a google on this and yes I do know how to use a SEM - lol).

Anyway - the only true way of been totally secure in deleting data from a hard-drive is with a very large implement (hard drives don't cost that much anyway if you are really paranoid).

As for using software, there are loads out there that claim to delete data - Evidence Eliminator being one (this particular item seems to draw a lot of discussion, but I believe it cannot do what it claims simply because it is not a low level format - oops open for a neg here lol).

If you don't want to swing lump-hammers around then I would suggest using a combination of DBAN and a low level format utility as recommended by your hard drive maker.

The link for DBAN is

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

cheers
humpy