Best way to PREVENT data recovery without Formatting?

[Majestic]

Hi,

I have a client's computer where he had sensitive accounting information. Long story short I need to keep Windows the way it is after having removed his documents, accounting data, basically his profile without removing the profile itself.

I've been able to recover many hard drives using tools like Get Data Back quite successfully. Now I'd like to do the opposite. Problem is I can't zero out the drive nor format it.

At the moment I'm defragmenting the drive as I believe it will eliminate the extra "space" where his old information used to reside. But what else do I do? Any suggestions or TOOLS I can use would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Majestic

[Simmy]

Ccleaner will allow you to wipe selected files and folders with Gutmanns 35-pass algorithm. I would probably remove the files with that method. There is also a program called Acronis Drive Cleanser that lets you wipe the free space on a hard drive in a similar way.

[Pc Fixed Right]

Have you tried Ultra Wipe? It will let you select the folder you wish to wipe.

[seedubya]

Eraser http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

[mnoakes]

Clone to another HDD that has been securely been wiped.

Or clone to a temp hard drive, do your secure wipe stuff and then clone back.

[RyanMeray]

Or clone to a temp hard drive, do your secure wipe stuff and then clone back.

This was going to be my suggestion as well.

[Jory]

Yeah, I was going to suggest cloning the drive and then using Book and Nuke.

[Majestic]

Clone to another HDD that has been securely been wiped.

Or clone to a temp hard drive, do your secure wipe stuff and then clone back.

I like that idea! Provided of course that it does not copy the other info back too? I suppose not. Well in any case I have just used ultrawipe and I believe for now that will has done the trick. Fortunately the hard drive was not too big and it was a slightly older system so it did not take long.

I'll keep these techniques in mind for the future.

Thanks all for the help I'm good now :D

[Bryce W]

Clone to another HDD that has been securely been wiped.

Or clone to a temp hard drive, do your secure wipe stuff and then clone back.
Im not sure about this. As you know, deleted data remains in its original location until something else overwrites it.

Think of it like a book. When you delete something all you do is delete the reference to that page in the table of contents (until something else replaces that page). If you were to copy back and forth between two hard drives it would probably still existing becayse although it doesnt exist in the table of contents, the "page" still exists and that would probably be copied back.

[RyanMeray]

Im not sure about this. As you know, deleted data remains in its original location until something else overwrites it.

Think of it like a book. When you delete something all you do is delete the reference to that page in the table of contents (until something else replaces that page). If you were to copy back and forth between two hard drives it would probably still existing becayse although it doesnt exist in the table of contents, the "page" still exists and that would probably be copied back.

Most cloning software works by copying everything listed on the index. It doesn't clone bit-for-bit, so if you were to delete a humongous file that occupied a contiguous chunk of the hard drive, then created a disk image with Acronis, it would ignore that deleted file since it's no longer in the index.

The compresssion wouldn't be very useful on disk imaging software if it had to deal with all of the delete data in addition to the data you actually care about.

Now, there is bit-by-bit cloning software, but I think what we're suggesting is disk imaging, not full drive cloning.