For most of the Windows user, like you and me, the meaning of permanent deletion is deleting data from recycle bin, shift delete or formatting of the drive. This activity only deletes the reference to the file. A delete command simply erases the pointers to files thus making it impossible for the OS to locate the data. The actual 0’s and 1’s aren’t technically erased, it was just hidden from immediate view to an operating system. It can be still present in your hard drive. Let’s explain it in a simpler way, it is like tearing an index page of the book, but the content is still present in the book.
The best way to permanent deletion of data is to overwrite the data contain in hard drive. It can be done by using data erasing software that replace the secret data with random 0’s and 1’s.
Different Data Erasing Techniques:-
There is a slight chance of data recovery even after complete hard drive destruction, may be your secret data is recovered by someone who may misuse that information for later for any suspicious activity.
1) Physical Destruction of Drive – The most easiest and cheapest method of data deletion is a physical destruction, which can be easily done by common instruments which are available in every household. This process is traditionally done even in many advanced countries and a major percentage of the world population are still using this approach. It is a good way to reduce your stress by hammering a hard drive with a nail on a hard drive. Although, this process completely destroys the read-write head, but the chances of data recovery from platter is still possible. Also, this process helps in encouraging E-waste and thus eventually lead to more heaps of waste. It is the easiest way to destroy a large amount of data.
2) Software Overwrite Process – The most advanced and effective way of data deletion which use a powerful algorithm to overwrite the existing data with random 0’s and 1‘s. Some software even uses 3 passes or 7 passes overwriting process, after which there is no chance of data recovery. The advantage of this method is it can be used in your home/office/small organization/shops with no theft of your secret data being shared with any suspicious person, which can be shared with anyone by chance when you visit a service center.
3) Magnetic destruction of Drive – It is a process of deleting unwanted magnetic field data stored on a disk drive or other storage media. No matter what data you have, this data destruction scheme fully erased the data, which is out of the reach of data recovery. One limitation of this process is that it need an expert level person to perform a data erasing task.
Need of Data erasing Software
Disk erasing is the most secure way to erase the data from hard disk permanently.
Disk erasing process overwrites the entire hard drive with the binary data (0 or 1). This process typically overwrites MBR (Master Boot Record) partition table and sectors of the hard-drive. MBR is a small program that executes at the time of system booting. It presents in the first sector of the hard disk. So, a software that can access all areas on the hard drive and bypass BIOS and OS would be optimum to perform complete data erasure.
Conclusion: - While it was totally a user choice which method he/she want to adopt to securely erase their sensitive data, but as a responsible citizen of the country, it will be our responsibility to use an environment-friendly process with minimum E-waste.
