Hi I'm new so this is a New Guy post. Please direct me to the correct forum for this question:

I bought a used laptop and the hard drive is loaded with files from the previous owner. I deleted the ones I could find but my concern is that there may be other files on this laptop that I cannot see. How do I get in there and clean these out and how do I know that all the files and logs and any archive has been deleted?

For instance, a friend of mine got a hard drive that had been previously used by a bank. When he had it investigated there were files of accounts with SSN, account numbers, and all kinds of personal information on them. This drive had been wiped but the files on it were recovered somehow.

Can the files on a hard drive ever be completely destroyed? If so how? I would like to feel at ease that no files from someone elses use is resident on my computer.

Thanks for any responses,
jcatsguru

[Moderator edit: post moved to more appropriate forum. jgweed]

Unfortunately short of physically destroying the drive you can't delete the information. There are ways to read the hdd even if the drive has been wiped, the data can still be retrieved with a microscope and someone trained in forensic retrieval techniques. This is a very expensive process, and I doubt that your average person will be have information worth that amount of money to retrieve.

Personally...I'd wipe it with something like Wipe Drive or Active Killdisk and not worry about it.

Edit: I didn't provide a link to Drive Wipe as it is a commercial application.

That's what I thought. Thanks dc3. I guess I will go out and buy a new HDD. Some of the files were not so good and this is going to be my sons laptop for school.

Unless there is a problem with the drive itself, I would just wipe it and use it. Wiping the drive will completely over write the contents of the hdd, infections and all. If you are doing this to increase the size of the hdd, that would be a different matter.