Mark Wallace wrote:
Reformating a hard drive does not erase everything, so to be on the
safe side I use Kill Disk. Kill Disk writes zeros on the entire
drive, removing the partitions and everything.
Although reformating a hard drive will probably erase most viruses, I
am told that there are viruses that get written in minute spaces
between the partitions, and reformating only erases the Windows
partition.
I've heard of viruses overwriting the Master Boot Record, but not hidden
outside of partitions. Sure, a virus doing BIOS-level writes could write
data wherever it wanted to, but I can't see how a virus lurking outside
any partition is going to be seen and run. Anyone know if this can
happen? I suppose a virus might hide information outside of a partition,
but I can't think of how a virus lurking there is ever going to be found
and executed.
The police have software that enables them to recover kiddie porn from
a reformated hard drive. Reformating doesn't wipe everything clean.
Mere possession of kiddie porn is a felony.
Windows format is "recoverable". There is a deep format mode to make it
"unrecoverable" (/really/ wipe out the data). Beyond that, there are
specialty devices that can read residual magnetism on a disk (used by
the NSA, etc.) and recover data that's been overwritten a number of times.
Some companies with defense contracts will require you to kill disk
your hard drive when you quit. They know that reformating does not
erase the whole memo and that there are programs out there that can
recover data from a formatted hard drive.
I take it that this is for a personally owned computer, rather than one
owned by your employer? I think that's overkill, but who knows who sets
these policies. The only way to really wipe out all traces of
confidential information is to smash the drive and disc and then take a
blowtorch to it. Short of that, certain three-letter agencies (and their
foreign equivalents) have a good chance of recovering data.
1) Once you've run kill disk, you need to restore from a backup, to get
a usable personal system -- how do they know that your backup doesn't
contain confidential information?
2) Even kill disk doesn't kill old data to the point where sophisticated
equipment can't recover it. Your existing drive mechanism can't read it,
but the platter(s) can be transplanted into a more sensitive drive.
I use kill disk about once a year and install the new Ubuntu directly
from a new CD on a zero filled drive. The partition tools that come
with Linux distros aren't perfect.
Overkill.
I keep all of my files on a flash drive that is on my car keys (That's
why I will get so frantic if I ever lose my car keys, my wife has
another set of keys, but emails that came to me today are already on
the flash!
No backup of your flash drive?
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