Erasing files

[LesWUK]

Dear Forum members

The hard drive on my Laptop has developed a fatal boot sector corruption and those nice people from Dell have sent me a new one, however they want the old one back, fair enough.

However there are some sensitive files on the old disk that I need securely erasing before letting the disk off site.

My first though was to low level reformat the disk but all the utilities I have tried, fall over when they try and write (I presume zeros) to the disk. Catch twenty two, I cannot get into the operating system to use a Windows based file scrubber and I cannot reformat the disk from the DOS level.

Now bearing in mind there are only 6 files I need to erase, and I know their location (the rest of the disk contents are not personal). Can the forum suggest a dos based utility that can be booted from a floppy and allow me to select a files and securely erase then?

If all else fails I will hace to use standard dos command or take a hammer to the disc

All suggestions gratefully accepted.

Regards

 

[TomCologne]

Would reinstalling Win from CD and then use a shredder be an option?

TomCologne

 

[LesWUK]

Thanks Tom

I did try booting from the Windows install disk and using the option of Repair, Reformat or Reinstall. In all the three occations it errors with 'Bad Sector(s) Detected'.

I am warming to the hammer option

Les W

 

[TomCologne]

Yes Les,

I too have a "Cold Boot" hammer close to my desk;-) but I'm not sure if the Dell people are going to like it. Maybe a strong magnet would work?

However, you could still try Hiren's BootCD 8.6, a free collection of misc utilities,

http://mymalaysia.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/hirens-bootcd-86/

It's really worth having it when the next desaster happens.

Good luck,

TomCologne

 

[Grenage]

Alternatively you could just not send it back, and see if they follow it up. You could hammer it then


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[LesWUK]

Thanks guys, I am currently downloading Hiren's BootCD 8.6 and I will see what it contains and let you know.

I must admit to a slight ulterior motive here in trying to get the disk on its feet again. Dell have said they will send a courier to collect the disk, however they said that about a motherboard and then a screen they replaced and they have both been sat on my shelf for six and nine months respectively. So I am hoping to gain a spare drive I can put in a removable caddy.

Regards

 

[karlharper]

Hi

If you want to get rid of sensitive data, degaussing is probably the best way because it removes any magnetism on the disk thus rendering it unreadable by hardware or software based recovery if done properly

Hard drive degaussers are rather expensive

Sorry for replying to this thread when it is so old. I thought you might need an input maybe