CRT

I would agree with that one reformat destroys most things, programs, data and everything else.

However, I have, in my time working on PCs, come across a virus that survived a reformat. Now whether that virus was still active or not I do not know but it was there on the hard drive waiting for my colleagues and I to re-install windows.

So, rather than take the chance of the virus being active I got NAV and deleted it.

Now, I will admit that I know very little about rootkits, other that they are worse than viruses or worms and are very difficult to eradicate and, from what I read this afternoon, even harder to spot.

The Ministry of Defense (MOD) recommends that a PC's HD should be reformatted seven times before being disposed of. Therefore, reformatting seven times will get rid of everything and make anything that was every on the HD unrecoverable and totally useless, i.e. nothing can survive.

I would also agree that zero filling a drive then reformatting it could be the same as reformatting it seven times but either way we are still talking about getting rid of something that is notoriously difficult to eliminate, namely being infected by a rootkit.

However, I will confess that I have never personally reformatted a HD seven times but I would if I had to.



UK Bob