ThinkPad finally shipped...

Replacing the hard drive should do the trick.

Delete the files and defrag it; that's probably good enough.

There are commercial disk wipers that write all over the drive to really lose stuff, but how many laptop thieves have sophisticated data recovery tools?

She doesn't want to run pspice?

John

I don't know. She's really good at math ;-)

...Jim Thompson

install ultrasentry(from the guys that make ultraedit32) and run wipe freespace?

-Lasse

Aha! I LOVE UltraEdit!

...Jim Thompson

Now that the whole world knows about it, you'd better scrub the disk, and then tell the world again.

-- Joe

I can't get the "world" to even come here for a free party. Why would the "world" seek out that laptop?

...Jim Thompson

Jim Thompson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

fdisk , format c:

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----

----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

I don't want to remove everything.

...Jim Thompson

No. All that does is rewrite the partition data, file allocation tables, etc. Data sectors will be marked as empty but not overwritten and can be read with low level tools.

Because before today, only you and a few others were aware of the "proprietary information" on that laptop. Now Google is aware of the laptop, the existence of the information, the incomplete erasure, and your granddaughter. Throw in a well-motivated industrial spy and it sounds like a cakewalk...

-- Joe

I initially thought no, then it dawned, format D:, which is where all the data is.

...Jim Thompson

me wrote

Jim Thomps>I initially thought no,

Your initial impulse was correct.

...and when someone runs an UNFORMAT utility on it??

I'm sure your clients won't be happy unless you use a DoD-compliant WIPE utility on it. (OVERWRITE the data with gibberish).

"Darik's Boot and Nuke" is widely used. There are other choices--many free (GPL):

Who made the hard drive? Some of the manufacturers have free software on their sites to wipe unused areas and deleted data.

If yo don't know who made the drive, download and run "Belarc Advisor" to find out. It also displays a lot of other useful information about a computer, including the software registartion keys. You can get it here:

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hovnanian.com:

Sure, it rewrites partition data and FATs. The reloading writes on the disk. More than adequate for giving to granddaughter....

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----

----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

How about the delete key?

I'll tell you what, you do that to a disk (not too large, say, not over 100 GB) send it to me and i will recover it and sent it back to you along with a backup on DVD's. If i get over 95% of the data back, you ship the disk back to me as prize. Mind, the only security measure you use is "fidsk, format c:". This also assumes that the disk was not encrypted in the first place.

A Linux Live boot disk, assuming it has a CD. You boot Linux live, and write 0's to all your hard drives, then write 1's to all your hard drives, then write '0xA' to your hard drives, then write 5's to your hard drives, then write 0's to your hard drives twice more.

Actually, if you're not worried about Homeland Security, just booting Linux Live and doing

$ dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda

would do it.

Of course, you'd then have to install something. ;-)

How about test Vista and give us a report? >:->

Have Fun! Rich