But did you know that data can still be retrieved from a formatted hard disk or storage media? Imagine if the data falls in the wrong hands of a Scammer and then that data can be used to learn about your browsing habits, your personal information, banking data and more. Scary isn’t it?

I know it is scary, but with the right kind of tools you can save yourself this fright. But before we take a peep in to some of my favourite tools, let’s understand a bit about how data is stored and what happens when you delete or format a disk.

Tossing files into the computers Recycle Bin and then emptying the trash deletes the record of the file, but not the actual data the file points to. Think of it as removing the labels from folders in a file cabinet. The folders and information in them still exist, even if retrieving the data takes more time and effort. When you delete a file from your computer, it’s not really gone until the areas of the disk it used are overwritten by new information. If you use the normal Windows delete function, the “deleted” file is sent to the Recycle Bin until the space it uses is required by other files. If you use Shift-Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, the space occupied by the file is marked as available for other files. However, the file could be recovered days or even weeks later with third-party data recovery software. As long as the operating system does not reuse the space occupied by a file with another file, the “deleted” file can be recovered.

The same is true if you format a hard drive. It is still possible for someone with the right tools to retrieve data on the drive. Yikes!

The same goes with formatting a hard drive. The kind of formatting that we do normally is high level formatting. What high level formatting does is set up the file system from scratch and in the process the information where files were stored is removed. In short, high level formatting is the process of writing the file system structures on the disk that let the disk to be used for storing programs and data. Formatting a disk this way removes all information about the pointers in the File Allocation Table (FAT) which point to the location of a file on the disk. This means that old data still remains loaming in the dark.

Low level formatting on the other hand re-initializes the disk and resets the values of each and every one bit, to zero. Remember, data is stored in digital format as 1 & 0? Low level formatting is the process of outlining the positions of the tracks and sectors on the hard disk and writing the control structures that define where the tracks and sectors are. This is often called a “true” formatting operation because it really creates the physical format that defines where the data is stored on the disk.

Here are some tools that would help you to safely and securely wipe out the slate clean before you sell it or recycle it.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke: Darik’s Boot and Nuke (“DBAN”) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

DBAN is a free software product that can be used at home or in a business at zero cost.

URL: http://www.dban.org/

SDelete: Good old Microsoft with their free command line utility called SDelete. SDelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. SDelete (Secure Delete) implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M, to give you confidence that once deleted with SDelete, your file data is gone forever.

URL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx

Eraser: Eraser is a freeware and open source security tool to completely remove data from your hard drive. Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

URL: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Evidence Nuker: This piece of software allows you to choose which items would you like to erase such as Address Bar History, Browser Cache, Cookies, Documents History and much more. Evidence Nuker features several shredding methods, including 5220.22-M, the military standard set by the Department of Defense.

URL: http://www.evidencenuker.com/

The next time you think of selling your laptop, desktop or dump your USB Pen drive, make sure that the data on the storage medium is properly erased and not just deleted.

Remember, protecting data sometimes means erasing it.

If you know of any more tools that you think will benefit the computing community, do share them as part of the comment. Many will surely benefit from it.

Open Source is a methodology based on which the design, development and the distribution of the developed software is carried out along with its source code. On the other hand, Open Standards means a royalty-free distribution of technology which has been formalized and approved by committees that are open to participation by all interested parties. For example, W3C is a body working on standards for Web Technologies. Click here for more information.

The word “Standards” means a set of guidelines to which a lot of people have agreed upon. Putting this definition in the context of software, “standards” allow a company to pick and choose from competing vendors and interoperate their systems without being pinned down to one of them.

Many think that open source software offers the same advantage, but that is not true. Open source means that you have access to source code for inspection and modifications but it may fail interoperability. This does not mean that open source is not good. There is lots of software available which are better or provide a similar kind of functionality that paid software will do. And the best part of open source is that it is free and comes with the entire source code. But what happens when you need assistance? Is the assistance free or is there a price tag? We all know that there is lot of stake involved in providing support. If you are thinking that support means training people on how to use the product or software, you are mistaken. There is more to support then that. It involves product trainings, more research to fix bugs and vulnerabilities, distributing patches and updates, etc. There may be companies that provide support on open source platforms and have no tie-up or relation with the parent company that designed and distributed the software for free. They may be able to fix small issues since there is access to the source code, but imagine a situation where there is something wrong at the core level and requires dependency on the original developer. Further to this, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that open source does not necessarily equate to cost savings. There are still licensing fees, service fees, implementation fees and support fees associated with it.

I would feel comfortable if I knew that the open source software that I downloaded for free gave me the source code and so I can fix or modify the application as per my needs. But I would be more comfortable thinking that the paid software I use from the vendor is going to be in the industry for long and many brains are working on the software to ensure that it runs smoothly and has improvised functionality with every new release.

All this does not mean that open source is a big NO-NO. Open source does provide the benefit of using someone’s work in your own and then redistributing your work in similar fashion so that someone else can get benefit from your work. This way the community can make progress using a collaborative manner of production. Most of the time this needs to be shared and released under GPL (General Public License) which means that you cannot charge others for a license and you must make your own source code available to the public. This makes it IP (Intellectual Property) unfriendly. Many a times this code will not even make its way to the main stream and will simply end up as an individual company’s product. This leaves a question in mind – will everything in the long run be compatible or provide interoperability? Will my investment in one segment ensure returns in the other or vice-versa? Who’s going to provide updates and security patches to fix vulnerabilities? Who’s going to invest billions to innovate? From my perspective, it’s not a fight between open source and commercial software. It’s all about open standards versus proprietary standards.

I feel we should have more specific and beneficial standards that are not vendor specific or not vendor dictated because ultimately it is the interoperability that counts at the end of the day. If open source software fits your environment and gets the work done in terms of costs, features, support or maintenance – all’s well. But if you are putting security, compliance, performance, upgrades and scalability before everything else then proprietary software designed with open standards in mind is your choice. We can even extend this further and run a combination of both – it’s our choice.

What do you think? Let me know.