[stokey12]

If this question has been asked before I do apologise.

I have a Hewlett Packard laptop with Windows XP which I wish to pass on to a friend. I have peformed a 'destructive recovery' by tapping F11 on opening and this seems to have wiped all my files off leaving only the original pre-loaded programmes when I bought the pc 3 years ago.

My query is does my pc have any records of my past details? There was a lot of very confidential information relating to banking and finance, plus medical records and sites.

So, is a 'destructive recovery' a full cleansing/wiping agent?

Many thanks for any advice.

[mrss]

I don't believe that was a destructive recovery. If you did the usual HP recovery manager, it erased everything and wrote the original factory disk partition back onto the hard drive from either CD's or a D: drive partition.

Any of the older files that happened to occupy disk space used by the rewrite would be obliterated, but odds are there will be some files that were just deleted, but not fully erased existing in the free space of your drive. It would take a lot of work, but someone could find them. I doubt that most friends have the skills or desire to do so, especially with a gift laptop, but it's your call.

I read about the eraser program in another thread and tried it. It has an option where you can erase the free space. with different degrees of thoroughness. I tried it with a single pass where it writes random data. Pretty fast and safe enough in my opinion, unless you expect James Bond's tech support will be reading the drive. Then you want its more sophisticated algorithms, which could take days to finish. I didn't find the program easy to use, but did muddle thru it.

[lunarlander]

I don't know if a "destructive recovery" formats the hard drive. But even if it does, there are software that can scan a hd for file fragments and restore them. Usually, when a file is deleted and emptied from the recycle bin, the file contents are still there on the hd, its just the file header that is removed. Formatting deletes the directory structure on a hd and makes it harder to recover files. You need a secure wipe program to totally erase a file. I found one by googling here:
http://www.cezeo.com/products/disk-redactor/
But I have not used it before, so I don't know how good it is.

[1SillyBilly]

Google "Darik's Boot and Nuke" and read about it. It comes highly recommended by many users.

[duknud]

I was just going to respond and suggest DBAM (Dariks boot and nuke). It re-writes 1's and 0's multiple times over the hard drive...its what NASA would use if it was destroying spaceshuttle blueprints....ha

[hewee]

If you have any SYMANTEC software like SystemWorks or can just get the CD to us because there is the Wipe on it that can be run from the CD. Also you can defrag from the CD and re-writes 1's and 0's in the free space.

[stokey12]

That is all very interesting and thanks so much for all the replies. I don't mind paying for a solution but need something I can buy and use on my old laptop and then retain for this one when its time comes to be passed on - probably to my grandson.
So the search is on for a wipe-system that is on a cd, Any more help on this one please?

[1SillyBilly]

Originally Posted by stokey12

That is all very interesting and thanks so much for all the replies. I don't mind paying for a solution but need something I can buy and use on my old laptop and then retain for this one when its time comes to be passed on - probably to my grandson.
So the search is on for a wipe-system that is on a cd, Any more help on this one please?

Had you googled "Darik's Boot and Nuke" and read the information as I suggested you would have seen that there are sites where you can download the program to a floppy or a CD.

Here is but one site
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/