Re: ShopTalk: To continue with computers . . .

[Steve \"Cub\" Culbreth]

TFlan,   Norton has a program (Wipe, I think) that cleans a disk in a fashion suitable to NSA.  In the Army, we were authorized to use Norton Wipe Disk to clean the disk and then reuse it. It deletes the files and writes zeros, or zeros and ones, three times.  You will not recover any files. Before Norton, we had to delete the files, reformat the drive, and then bust the platters to pieces with a hammer.   Cub ----- Original Message ----- From: tflan To: ShopTalk Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 7:51 AM Subject: ShopTalk: To continue with computers . . . There was an interesting news item on TV last night about computer security. Seems like donated computers are really popular with some nefarious hackers. Data is being retrieved from the HD's and used to create identity thefts. I guess a lot of y'all know that when you "delete" info from the HD it isn't really deleted - its simply camouflaged by the removal of the first letter on the file. Its easily recovered. Several years ago I had a program (DOS) called "XTREE" that opened any and all files on my machine and allowed for erasure.   The reporter on the program spoke with a few "hackers" and asked how to dump all data permanently. They mentioned reformating the HD via "FDisk" and deleting partitions. However, they said that the only sure and certain way was to completely "wash" the disk, or take a hammer to it.   So, I'm wondering; does there exist a program anywhere that will totally erase files without "washing" the HD.   Inquiring minds need to know.   TFlan