What I mean is I will be selling my laptop and I erased everything meaning I started all over with the recovery CD like if I was new again. What I'm worried about is whoever i'm selling to will retrieve all my personal information that I thought I already erased. It it possible for someone to do that??????
It's possible, but would take a knowledgeable and persistent person. When a file is deleted, it doesn't permanently erase the contents; it just takes it out of the directory listing and marks the disk space as available. There's commercially available software that allows people to look at supposedly unused portions of the hard disk and see what's really there.
If you're really paranoid, you can buy programs that truly erase the data on the disk by overwriting it repeatedly with special patterns until there's no trace of the original data. One of the best is the free program "Eraser", which can be downloaded at http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/.
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Yes it's possible with a third party software like Active@Undelete for example.
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It's possible, but would take a knowledgeable and persistent person. When a file is deleted, it doesn't permanently erase the contents; it just takes it out of the directory listing and marks the disk space as available. There's commercially available software that allows people to look at supposedly unused portions of the hard disk and see what's really there.
If you're really paranoid, you can buy programs that truly erase the data on the disk by overwriting it repeatedly with special patterns until there's no trace of the original data. One of the best is the free program "Eraser", which can be downloaded at http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/.
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Yes it is but if you really want to be sure of things. Get a naked drive and install it in the machine then sell it.
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Low level format the drive.The software utilities are down loadable from the hard drive manufacturers web site for free. Low level format the drive twice. No information will be retrievable . There will only be 0's or 1's on the drive NOTHING else. Be prepared , a low level format takes a lot of time( hours) So go do something else . It's very much like watching paint dry. Then reinstall your operting system.
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It's the same security measures that the cia uses to recycle hard drives
Yes it is very easy to get all your info , use this then reinstall and you will be all set ,http://www.softexia.com/news.php?readmore=3783
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