Introduction
Most of the people don’t realize that just deleting data from the hard drive isn’t enough, information can still be recovered. There is a lot of hard drive data that can be recovered with specific software, so keep in mind if you want to sell your hard drive to properly delete all the data from it. If you sell your hard drive the person that buys it from you can recover a lot of personal information about you. If the hard drive data is not deleted properly another person can recover all your documents or other personal information. Data can still be recovered even if you just format the hard drive. There is good professional software that can recover almost all the lost hard drive data to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you here is what you can do.
Step 1
When you delete a file you are not exactly removing the hard drive data. The file information is stored in a directory that the operating system can’t reach. When you delete a file you are just relocating the file from the directory and send a message to the hard drive that allows other data to be stored there. If the region from where you deleted the information is not overwritten with other information, the original information can be recovered.
Step 2
The way to remove the hard drive data completely is to remove all the data on the hard drive and then overwrite with useless information. This means you can format the hard drive and then you can fill the hard drive with all sorts of random data.
There are two methods to make sure the data from your hard drive cannot be recovered. The first method is called the Gutmann Method and it’s the best and secure way to remove your hard drive data. With this method the data is written 35 times with efficient patterns that make the data unrecoverable. This method takes a lot of time but it’s very secure. This method is mainly used by military and important government offices.
Step 3
The second method was developed by the United States Department of Defense. It’s not as secure as the first method but it is a lot faster. With this method the hard drive data it overwritten seven times.
Step 4
There are some good applications that will remove the hard drive data for good. A good application is Eraser, this application is an open source software that will work on any type of Windows and DOS. When you run the application a box will pop up asking you when you want to erase the data, now or you can schedule an erase later.
Step 5
Then just drag the files you want to delete into the application. After you added all the files that need to be erased the software will prompt you with the removal method that you with to use. This software has a third option that is called pseudorandom data. This method will fill your hard drive with random data. After you selected the method just press erase. Now your personal files are deleted for good.
