Ken,
First off, Fdisk simply restructures the partition info and initializes the
master boot record (MBR) and file allocation table (FAT). This destroys the
data (sometimes) that tells the O/S where the files are (physically) on the
drive but doesn't mess with the data at all. Format may or may not actually
write to the drive ( some older DOS formats were actually
destructive)  but  usually a format simply verifies track position and
media integrity. It clears the FAT or writes a character to the first
position of a file name which in essence, tells the O/S the file isn't there.

Now, after all that nonsense, here is an explanation on how the data is
still there and how you can retrieve it. Since the disk hasn't actually
been written to in the data area, the data is still there. A number of
programs are available that looks at the physical media and reports what it
finds. It allows you to look at the data in binary, ASCII, and hexadecimal
formats. One of the three formats usually makes sense...ie you can
understand it. To make matters more complicated, even if you DO write to
the disk, remnants of the previous data remain and there are programs that
can sniff this data out. Hence, you need to write to the disk multiple
times to truly make the disk clean. I hope this has been helpful.

At 08:37 AM 9/29/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>There's a lot of dialog out there about wiping your hard drive clean
>before giving/selling the computer to someone else. Many responses say,
>"running FDISK and simply reformatting will NOT erase the data, and it can
>still be recovered."  Okay, how?
>
>          PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
>                      visit our download web page at:
>                   http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml