Safe computing means smart computing. Data is the heart and soul of computers and certainly, you will not desire to get it caught with the prying eyes. You probably have heard about donating the computers to hospitals, banks and other organizations after extreme usage or outdating. Do you think, you have no private information on the donated hard drive? Let’s see, how suspicious are you?
According to the conventional believes, formatting is the ultimate act which can ruin the file existence. Well, actually this is an abstract process, let’s get into the details. Even if you use ‘quick format’ in Windows to format the hard disk, the process moves without threatening the data existence. Confused? In actual phenomenon, after formatting an empty directory is created, which has no pointers for the residing file, and a label of file non-existence gets attached. Now, as the operating system has to interact with the pointers before actually accessing the file, it takes the file inaccessible due to the absence of location pointers, while actually, the private data is always there in the hives of hard disk.
You get stick what the operating system tells you and assume that other users will also take it as the way it is. But, actually, the user at the other end (to which you are donating the system) can be too smart to know the data recovery concepts, which is a way to get the information from the formatted hard drives. Though data recovery is not distributed for free, but when this is the issue of getting access to the confidential information, especially from financial concerns, hackers do it for their sake. So what are the ways which can practically destroy the data?
One idea could be to use heavy magnets, but its practical application is far from the assumed. Even the highly powerful magnets will draw fewer impacts on the data.
You can destroy it physically, make holes in the platters and more, but I think this will make your donation quite less useful for others. Moreover, the environmental concerns are also there.
More in-depth analysis says that overwriting the data will do. Data recovery has no answer of overwriting and performing the process for whole disk will offer drive wipe. Covering the existing data with the arbitrary binary digits so that no solution can read it is a technique which can really help useful. Several utilities have been launched, through which the user can wipe hard drive and maintain the data safety.
Drive wipe is a technology to help the users, who maintain critical information on hard drive and don’t want to get it revealed in any means. Wipe hard drive and make your data far from the nasty reach.
For best drive wipe results, Stellar Disk Wipe is the cure. This is an application which can perform up to 35 passes, based on the algorithms you chose. Available in the form of bootable CD, this will wipe hard drive with the dead surety of no recovery. This can even delete locked system files.
