I want to delete the unused contents of a disk without leaving any traces, e.g. for giving it to a colleague or a customer. The colleague/customer shall receive some files which are already on the disk. However, I have used the disk for other purposes before and I have just deleted my files.
Until now I have
- deleted everything
- Run SysInternals SDelete with the
-c
switch on the drive
Using FTK Imager Lite I can still see some file names, although the file content seems to be destroyed. The reason for the filenames still being there is explained on the SDelete website.
How can I securely get rid of the file names?
Is is safe to just delete the volume in Windows disk manager and create a new NTFS file system using quick format?
I have tried that and at least FTK Imager does not show file names any more, but FTK Imager now relies on the new NTFS MFT, which is of course empty.
Note that I don't need to keep the MFT intact as in the question How to reset an NTFS MFT for no tracks of deleted files names to be found there?
Best Answer
Source Five hard disk cleaning and erasing tools
The article includes some screenshots of each tool.