partial format

[Jim Hawkins]

Is there a utility that allows you to re-format just a part of a drive ?
I've just saved a full copy of my c: drive (365,372 files containing
32,261,533,321 bytes!) using FastLynx 3.3. It took about 7 hours.
It would be save a lot of time if one could get rid of things like the
Temporary Internet Files before doing a backup.
It's no good using delete, because that doesn't actually delete anything !
It would be so useful to be able to reformat at file level.

Jim Hawkins

[Ghostrider]

Not sure what you mean but try this: (1) Delete the file; (2) Empty the
Recyle Bin, and (3) Defragment the partition in which the file resided.

Next, assuming that the Temporary Internet Files came from IE, set it to
delete them when closing. Better still, manually delete these files from
Tools>>>Internet Options. Or open Windows Explorer and manually delete.
Repeat (2) above.

GR

[John K.Eason]

In article <I4ydnboB1orhhWrP...@supernews.com>, tgb6...@pouser.com
(Jim Hawkins) wrote:

> *From:* "Jim Hawkins" <tgb6...@pouser.com>
> *Date:* Sun, 9 Feb 2014 05:56:11 -0000

Get a decent backup program that ignores unused disk space. Deleting a file marks
the space as unused, so if FastLynx is backing up deleted files it's obviously
doing a full disk sector backup rather than just a file backup.
A decent backup program (such as Macrium Reflect which I use) will also ignore
hyberfile.sys (the file used for hibernation) and the Windows page file.
I did a weekly full backup to my NAS this morning using Reflect and the log shows
that it took 27 1/2 minutes to backup 105.64GB (admittedly from a fast W7 machine
across a Gigabyte network).

Regards
John

[Jim Hawkins]

"John K.Eason" <jo...@jeasonNoSpam.cix.co.uk> wrote in message
news:memo.2014020...@jeason.cix.co.uk...

Thanks for your advice, John and GR.
I'm still using XP Pro (with SP3).
Am I right in thinking that formatting removes all traces of files which may
have been on the drive before ?
If so, the ability to re-format selected parts of a drive (selected files)
would seem to be a good way to safely destroy unwanted files which contain
sensitive data. That's why I posted the question.
Or is safe enough to do it by overwriting (with the likes of Eraser) ?

Jim Hawkins

[John K.Eason]

In article <6JmdnYj3GOLYX2rP...@supernews.com>, tgb6...@pouser.com

(Jim Hawkins) wrote:

> *From:* "Jim Hawkins" <tgb6...@pouser.com>

> *Date:* Sun, 9 Feb 2014 18:00:36 -0000

>

> Thanks for your advice, John and GR.
> I'm still using XP Pro (with SP3).
> Am I right in thinking that formatting removes all traces of files
> which may have been on the drive before ?

No! a normal Windows quick format only reinitialises the file pointers. The data
is still there and still recoverable. A low level format will initialise every bit
on the disk to zero, but using forensic techniques still allows some data to be
recovered.

> If so, the ability to re-format selected parts of a drive (selected
> files) would seem to be a good way to safely destroy unwanted files
> which contain sensitive data. That's why I posted the question.
> Or is safe enough to do it by overwriting (with the likes of
> Eraser) ?

Eraser is certainly better as it does overwrite files with different information
several times. It's worth reading an article like this too:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/completely-securely-erase-hard-drive-windows/

I've not really investigated them because I usually use a sledgehammer to dispose
of old drives, but I suspect that most of these programs are designed to erase the
*entire* disk, not just selected files on it.

Regards
John