Free PC Cleaners
Want to give our grandson old laptop & would like to clean the hard drive & delete files,What would be the best way to go about it?Thanks
Forum Discussion
Here's a quick test of the free version of the data recovery utility Recuva, maker of the popular CCleaner.
10 random photos where placed in a separate partition on a hard drive. Then deleted, and the Recycle Bin cleared. So now part of the drive's free space. No surprise, Recuva was easily able to restore all 10 photos.
The 10 photos were once again deleted, and the hard drive partition was re-formatted. Recuva was still able to restore 8 of the 10 photos from the unused space on the hard drive.
And finally, the remaining 8 photos were deleted, and the free space was then wiped "1" time using the free CCleaner. The result, Recuva couldn't recover any files under deep scan. All data was random scambled characters filling the entire partition.
I was going to compare Recuva, a consumer user recover app, against a forensic data recovery utility, but doubt the results would be much different if at all.
Notwithstanding, simply reinstalling the OS and/or formatting the hard drive, does little to prevent data recover from unused space. The hard drive needs to be written over completely. Though multiple passes are unnecessary with modern drives.
10 random photos where placed in a separate partition on a hard drive. Then deleted, and the Recycle Bin cleared. So now part of the drive's free space. No surprise, Recuva was easily able to restore all 10 photos.
The 10 photos were once again deleted, and the hard drive partition was re-formatted. Recuva was still able to restore 8 of the 10 photos from the unused space on the hard drive.
And finally, the remaining 8 photos were deleted, and the free space was then wiped "1" time using the free CCleaner. The result, Recuva couldn't recover any files under deep scan. All data was random scambled characters filling the entire partition.
I was going to compare Recuva, a consumer user recover app, against a forensic data recovery utility, but doubt the results would be much different if at all.
Notwithstanding, simply reinstalling the OS and/or formatting the hard drive, does little to prevent data recover from unused space. The hard drive needs to be written over completely. Though multiple passes are unnecessary with modern drives.
