I know about wiping the disk, but what about the MBR and P..

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

You can, of course, wipe your hard disk with complicated software that
do more or less their jobs.

let's say I am working on an important project. Company wise.

I delete the partition, remove all partitions and wipe the hard drive
from DOS.

Now, if someone installs an OS over it with a new partition, can't he
dig up a MFT mirror from the hard disk or collect MBR records and logs
that are present on certain physical parts of the hard disk ?

If is able to, maybe he can't get back the files, but at least, he
knows the names of the files, and the directory structure of past
partition tables.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

nh2 wrote:

> You can, of course, wipe your hard disk with complicated software that
> do more or less their jobs.

Or very simple software. IBM used to have a utility called "zerodisk" on
their site that ran from a DOS command prompt, took no parameters, and
wrote zeroes over the entire disk. About as simple as it gets.
>
> let's say I am working on an important project. Company wise.
>
> I delete the partition, remove all partitions and wipe the hard drive
> from DOS.

If you mean you erase all the files, that doesn't remove any data from the
disk, if you mean format that clears the FAT and directory structure but
doesn't remove any data beyond that.

> Now, if someone installs an OS over it with a new partition, can't he
> dig up a MFT mirror from the hard disk or collect MBR records and logs
> that are present on certain physical parts of the hard disk ?

Depends on the OS, it may wipe enough information to make this difficult.
But someone who is going after your data won't install an OS on the disk
he's attacking, he'll connect it to a machine that has an OS already
installed.

> If is able to, maybe he can't get back the files, but at least, he
> knows the names of the files, and the directory structure of past
> partition tables.

The only way to be absolutely sure the data won't be recovered is to
physicially destroy the surfaces of the platters by grinding off the
magnetic coating or melting them down.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Ok. Thanks for your answers. I thout wiping doesn't write where the
MFT and MFT Mirror log files and MBR are located.

shalowfate@yahoo.com (nh2) wrote in message news:<e018d27.0407101158.5544d2e8@posting.google.com>...
> You can, of course, wipe your hard disk with complicated software that
> do more or less their jobs.
>
> let's say I am working on an important project. Company wise.
>
> I delete the partition, remove all partitions and wipe the hard drive
> from DOS.
>
> Now, if someone installs an OS over it with a new partition, can't he
> dig up a MFT mirror from the hard disk or collect MBR records and logs
> that are present on certain physical parts of the hard disk ?
>
> If is able to, maybe he can't get back the files, but at least, he
> knows the names of the files, and the directory structure of past
> partition tables.