what happens after you format your HD?

some say that even if you format your drive for 1000x that there is still a chance that a person might hack some of your files that you deleted/format, is that true? i'm planning on selling my external hard drive, i just wanna be sure that the person gets it as brand new. also how do you put a password on your external hard drive? your opinions will be appreciated. thank u.

 

there's an even smaller chance of them knowing how to do it and an even smaller chance of there being full files and they wouldn't be interested on what was in your hardrive either

 

1.) If you just format, you erase the MBR, which is the "table of contents" for the hard drive. Even though you get rid of the index, all of the information is still there (assuming you haven't written over any of it). This is why data recover programs work (to a degree). If you want to reduce the risk of someone looking through your data, you'd want some kind of file shredder or a program that will write and rewrite a lot of data over the sectors to scramble the "pages." The odds that someone will fool with your stuff is slim, but if you need to be 100% sure that no one can retrieve the data, you need to physically (and throughly) destroy the drive.

 

RE: Topic

Your Data goes to Hard Drive Heaven?

LoL - all jokes aside, when one formats their hard drive, the links to the files are merely erased (while leaving behind the actual data) - this is the reason why one can no longer (normally) see the data after the format is complete.

To do a complete erasure, one could always pick up a utility like Acronis Drive Cleanser 6 (for about $40) from www.acronis.com to permanently erase the data.

I should point out there, that this isn't really necessary unless you either Have Super Sensitive/Secretive Info. *OR* if it'll just help you sleep better at night

- Jordan

 

Try this. No FHE with it though.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=37015