Re: Scrubbing Windows XP PC's

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"Bruce Chambers" <bchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O36w0rapIHA.4620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
KDawg44 wrote:
My company is getting rid of some older laptops and desktops. I need
to scrub these completely before they leave the office. I am going to
reinstall XP. Will this sufficiently remove the data or should I use
some kind of disk scrubber software, and if so, what?

Thanks.

Kevin


To protect your company's information and data from any future users of
average skills, you should, at the very least, format the hard drive. You
can do this using the original Installation CD. Simply boot from the
WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the opportunity to delete,
create, and format partitions as part of the installation process. (You
may need to re-arrange the order of boot devices in the PC's BIOS to boot
from the CD.) You can then reinstall WinXP and any applications that are
being teransfered with the computers.


Formatting the drive doesn't remove the data. It merely rewites the
directory and FAT structure. All anyone else has to do is unformat the
drive (a bit like undelete but on a grander scale) to recover everything
written on it.

I once inadvertently formatted my C: drive. I ran MS's UNFORMAT (came with
Windows 98 IIRC - removed subsequently). Following several messages about
things that were not found, there was a sense of relief when a box popped up
that said "Do you wish to unformat anyway?". It unformatted perfectly, the
only problem being that folders in the root directory had non descript names
like 'FOLDER001', 'FOLDER002' etc.


If you wish to do a more thorough job of protecting your company's
data, WipeDrive
(http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php) meets U.S. DoD
standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives, and
could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and applications.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand
Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Hard Drive Reformat Date
    ... Law enforcement does have access to some forensics tools [to recover deleted ... Once you unformat the drive, you may have clues as to what was done ... the format command would have no idea who was running the format.... ... I think Norton Utilities is one way to unformat drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.security)
  • Re: Scrubbing Windows XP PCs
    ... To protect your company's information and data from any future users of average skills, you should, at the very least, format the hard drive. ... You can then reinstall WinXP and any applications that are being teransfered with the computers. ... All anyone else has to do is unformat the drive to recover everything written on it. ... data, WipeDrive meets U.S. DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives, and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and applications. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • No ID address mark on floppy
    ... Sometimes it asks me to format the floppy disk, ... It is NOT the floppy disks, I've tried many different blank formatted ... just tons of bad A drives. ... but no "reinstall". ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • dvd rom and cd rw error code 19
    ... >reinstall it and then go into bios and make sure that it ... >the bios is set to boot from cd then boot. ... >reinstall or repair the drive or install and format the ... optical disk drives are affected by the error code 19 ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.hardware)
  • Re: Installing tiger from scratch with a second, partitioned drive in place
    ... > I reinstall all my recovery systems once or twice a month just to keep ... > them clean and optimized. ... if I have drives C and D I ... > if I format D at a later stage the system would ...
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