Data on a hard drive can technically be traced back thousands of writes.

It would take exponential amounts of time and money if somebody had went out of their way to try and erase the data though.

If you want to hide something that much totally detroying it is about the only way, although a couple of guys have developed an eraser that should totally wipe any hard drive passed through it, again mega mega money.

Burn it :|

You can get software the will write 0's o evey sector and overwrite any old information that was on a formated drive. This would make it vey difficult to recover any information.

[Edited on 30-12-2006 by _Allan_]

Cheers Aj.

EDIT and Ian

[Edited on 30-12-2006 by mattk]

Even with physical damage bits of the drive can be recovered where the magnetic information can still be read. Each file occupies a very small area on the drive therefore even with a small fragement of hard drive left from smashing it up you would still be able to get data.

Plus as mentioned the format doesn't actually remove the data, it just removes the information about where the files are so the drive appears empty. The data is not overwritten until it needs to be and even then old files can be got back using the correct software.

yes..every file you save to your computer (this can be any type of file) can be restored using the correct software

The only way to prevent this is to put a screw driver through the drive in question..and even this isn't a full proof way of hiding information

Doing a simple format will make it look like everything is gone to average joe...but all the files from before stay on your hard drive.


[Edited on 31-12-2006 by Aj.]

When you put all the manufactures (sp) C.Ds and reset your computer, does anything stay in the memory?? like is there a part of the computers memory that cant be deleted?? I seem to think there is (thats how they catch peados isnt it) where as my mate tells me there isnt.

Some one settle this please.