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    need to delete windows, cannot use optical drive.

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Sirius_GTO, Sep 20, 2007.

  1. Sirius_GTO

    Sirius_GTO Notebook Deity

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    Well I need to delete my windows so i can assure no one access my information. I'm sending the unit back to the company so is there a way to delete the current OS without reformatting? The optical drive does not work that is why I can't just reformat off disk.

    Thanks
     
    Sirius_GTO, Sep 20, 2007
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  2. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    swap the drive with an empty one - totally safe and quick

    cheers ...
     
    qhn, Sep 20, 2007
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  3. sasanac

    sasanac Notebook Evangelist

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    If your PC can boot from a USB device try running this from a USB stick drive...

    http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

    it has lots of disk utilities which can wipe/format your harddrive

    *edit oops sorry just read "without formatting" lol... sorry! but that said the disk utilities on the ultimate boot cd should allow you to delete individual folders too
     
    sasanac, Sep 20, 2007
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  4. Dragonpet

    Dragonpet Notebook Evangelist

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    Or if you are just want to protect a few file use Truecrypt, make a safe and stuff all your information into it. That's what I did, I made a 30 gig safe and stuff all my important/data into it to make sure other's don't touch it.

    You can make it a file or encrypt a whole drive/partition. Very useful and the protection algrithm is high. IMO, it's better than trying to get rid of Window,just make a new partition and encrypt that.
     
    Dragonpet, Sep 20, 2007
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  5. talz13

    talz13 Notebook Guru

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    it would be really hard to be sure that your information would not be accessible without formatting. Even if you delete the files, they remain on the hard drive. Most of the time, only the links pointing to the files are removed and the sectors that were being used for the files are added back to the "free" pool. They will still contain the same data until something comes along and overwrites them. Even then, data can still be recovered. If you really want everything gone, you should do a complete format and run a disk wiping utility that will overwrite the entire disk with 1's or 0's alternating multiple times.
     
    talz13, Sep 20, 2007
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  6. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    I'm sure there are a number of ways to boot Linux from a USB drive, and once you do that, you can use a utility called shred on /dev/sda to overwrite all your data. But that's pretty heavy-duty data destruction ;) It is however, the way I'd use should I need to do that.
     
    Pitabred, Sep 20, 2007
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