There are various reasons why a user needs to permanently erase the data from his hard drive. Some of the most common reasons are disposing off the hard drive, selling the computer, donating the computer, and deleting a fatal virus. To do so, the users either format their hard drive or use an inbuilt Windows command that can delete the data on the hard disk. One such command is 'Clean All' command available in the diskpart.exe application. However, there are situations where these utilities claim to delete all the hard drive data, but the truth is, they delete few data and the rest remains on the hard drive. In such cases, your important data can be read by the person to whom you are selling or donating your computer system. For avoiding any such situations, it is advisable to use an advanced Hard Drive Wipe software to permanently wipe the hard drive data.

To illustrate the above case, consider a scenario where you need to sell your Windows 2003-based system. Before doing so, you run 'Clean All' command on your system. While most computer users think that the command erases all the hard drive data, the fact is that it cleans only first 1MB sectors of your hard disk. The other data remains undeleted and can be easily read.

Cause:

A task maintained by VDS (Virtual Disk Service) manages the file pointer improperly, at the time when the function performs 'clean all' command.

Resolution:

Microsoft provides a hotfix solution for the above problem. To install the hotfix solution, you need to have a pre-installed Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 on your system. However, if the above issue persists even after installing the hotfix solution, then you need to use a third-party Hard drive wipe application.

These applications are Data Eraser Software that use powerful erasing algorithms to permanently erase data from your hard drive. The deleted data can not be recouped by any data recovery software. To erase data, you just need to install the application and follow few simple steps.