Hi, I am due to be moving soon and have two computers (Both run Windows XP) I want to remove my files from permanently - they are going to have new users.

I would like to remove all my files, Cookies, Web History, Pictures, Word Documents e-mails from Outlook etc. Its all legitimate I am not a criminal (Honest) but I would like Piece of mind that all my personal files banking and letters are unreadable.

If anyone has any pointers or advice it would be much appreciated. Thankyou in advance.

Originally posted by melbournian
Hi, I am due to be moving soon and have two computers (Both run Windows XP) I want to remove my files from permanently - they are going to have new users.

I would like to remove all my files, Cookies, Web History, Pictures, Word Documents e-mails from Outlook etc. Its all legitimate I am not a criminal (Honest) but I would like Piece of mind that all my personal files banking and letters are unreadable.

If anyone has any pointers or advice it would be much appreciated. Thankyou in advance.

You could 'zero' the drive - software is available to do this.

'USB Man' mentions it half-way down this page. (http://www.usbman.com/Guides/Clean%20Install%20of%20Windows.htm)

HTH

use a data sanitizer. handy bits is good and it's free

Put a new Hard drive in if your that worried, it's always possible that data can be retireved even after you think it has been deleted.

At the risk of being ridiculed by those more techie than I, would formatting the HD and reinstalling Windows not solve the problem?

Re-format the drive and reinstall the operating system. Its possible that someone could dig out your old stuff if they really wanted to, but seriously - who would bother???

Chances are they wouldnt know how. And if they did, chances are they dont care.

OTOH, if you want to play it super-safe, replace the HDD (costs virtually nowt) and take your old drive with you - I always try and take my old HDD and install it as a slave so i can move over all my old stuff.

Originally posted by Edd
Re-format the drive and reinstall the operating system. Its possible that someone could dig out your old stuff if they really wanted to, but seriously - who would bother???

Chances are they wouldnt know how. And if they did, chances are they dont care.

OTOH, if you want to play it super-safe, replace the HDD (costs virtually nowt) and take your old drive with you - I always try and take my old HDD and install it as a slave so i can move over all my old stuff.

:clap: Am not a technical dunderhead then :clap:

Formatting and reinstalling may still allow data to be recovered, depending on how the format was done. The only 100% safe way of destroying data on a disk is destroying the disk. Other 99.999% sure ways of destroying data involve writing over each part of the disk a number of times with, for example '0's (hence the term 'zero the drive').

However, its rarely necessary to go to these lengths, unless you really want to hide something. It would hardly be worth anyone going to the extent of recovering data from a formatted drive just to get hold of some letters to Auntie Maud.

However (again), I think that the OP wants to remove files added by users without having to go to the extent of reinstalling Windows. If that is the case, then you're never going to be sure that you have got rid of all files as, for example, its all to easy to accidentally save files to random directories and not realise. Or Windows often creates temporary files that are far from temporary.

One could always adopt the British Army solution :

Angle grinder and then burn the pieces of platter. :)

Rather excessive, but I have seen it used with sensitive data at one of my clients.

Most shredders write different patterns to each byte on the disk so as to totally remove any remaining 'bias' in the magnetic domains. Just writing zeros or any other single pattern can still give a disk from which information is recoverable, albeit with very expensive equipment that isn't going to be used unless you've got Bin Laden's address on there.

For peace of mind I think I'd go with the new disk, reinstall option. Of course, if you keep your existing disk you may still have to do some serious fudging when you put it in a new computer, if it's a bootable system, as the registry and driver files installed won't necessarily work with your new hardware.

And that's without taking licensing in to account. :)

Joe

Too right Joe.
I have worked in the disk drive industry for 15 years and some of the things the military ask you to do are frankly rediculous. One famous story [ if I told you the location I would be committing an offence, as i have signed the OSA ] asked our man to smash up the pcb's in a minicomputer disk interface to prevent the hard disks being read. Naturally our man put him right and he marched back into the guards office and there was some staring, and pointing and raised voices, and he came out a little red faced and agreed that it was the 10.5" disk platters which should be smashed up with a lump hammer..

Although on an ide interface drive I would be inclined to run Speedstor overnight with a random read and write pattern on an infinite number of passes.

delete all files you want to get rid of by using bc wipe or necro file and wipe files, then zero fill the free space using said programs, it writes zeros over all free space therefore obliterating what was there before, can be done to MOD requirements too

You could do a military strength wipe over using Tuneup Utilities 2004 - shredder tool.

It uses a method developed by the US Department of Defense (DoD 5220. 2-M) to securely wipe your files off if this is any good for you?

What angelus says, but a reformat should be sufficient.

Thanks for all you help.

Angelus - Thanks for your advice

Have you used Tuneup utiliies 2004 yourself?

I remember using a piece of software which was supposed to have been developed to Military Spec once before and suffered the consequences when I rebooted my machine. Needless to say it didn't reboot properly and I had to use system restore to restart windows - so if somebody has used one that they will reccomend I will give that a try.

I think the software I used before was called something like 'Incinerator' . But does this work with XP having the system restore function?

Edd - Thanks for your advice.

Some of the files I have on one of my computers are quite sensitive and I would very much like to have the piece of mind that they can't be recovered, and a further problem I have with your solution is that I don't have the XP disk so I can't reload it - but if I can track down a copy then that could be an option.

Kentboy + LL200 - Thanks for your advice

How do I Zero a drive?

As for getting out the lump hammer angle grinder and anvil I don't really want or need to go down that route but it is something I have considered in the past when my computer 'won't play ball'. :D

Love how the yanks do it - chop it into bits with a guillotine and then melt the disk :P

Good advice here from Microsoft :thumbsup:

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/technology/security/clean_the_hard_drive_before_dumping_your_pc.mspx

When I did some research at what used to be part of IBM, they had a HUGE machine for zapping discs with a magnetic field, guess they cant be used these days. Never did seem that safe :(

If you just format it and reinstall Windows then it's simple to recover old files - run Recover My Files (or other similar software) and in 10 minutes you'll have a nice list of files you can recover. 2 minutes searching on Google will bring this to the attention of anyone wanting to snoop. If there's anything on there that is private then download one of the programs mentioned above to make it that bit harder :)