is all data deleted by formating

The Format command can be undone. Yes, data can be recovered with a persistent person (with the knowledge and patience) in recovering data from formatted drives.

The best way to delete, or render "unrecoverable" any hard disk drive or floppy is to write 0's to the entire drive. There are several freeware and shareware utilities that will accomplish this.

Go to www.download.com and search for "erase drive" -- you'll pick up 27 hits.

If you want to ge rid of all the data on a drive try setting a magnet on it for a few seconds.

Format does not delete the data from the drive.
Even if you use the /U switch, many utilities will allow a skilled hacker to recover the data.

Re-partitioning the drive helps "IF" you make the new partitions a different size then the old partitions.

If someone wants the data off the drive bad enough, it is still possible to retrieve the data even after using some of the programs that write ones and zeros to the drive.

There are tehcniques that involve electron microscopes that are able to recover data from any physically intact drive platter.

So, what you do depends on how seriously you need to protect the data on the drive.

If the data must be kept from getting into anyones hands, your only secure option is to melt the drive down into a "modern art" paperweight.

If you are only concerned about the "casual" user, then format, re-partition, and use a data overwrite utility that passes Goverment security requirements.

Chas

The best way is low level format. Go to the site of your harddrive and is usual find there a software that do this job...

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