I've been told that when I clone a drive, all files including deleted files are copied. Is this true? Will the cloning process actually copy over all of my old deleted junk?

That's not entirely true, but in some cases, yes.

When you delete a file on a PC, it's not gone you just can't find it anymore. In fact, the area of study known as "hard drive forensics" uses techniques to search your hard drive's free space for deleted files. However, activities like defragging, reformatting, zero-filling, and just plain using your computer can permanently removes these deleted files over time.

It also depends on how you clone your hard drive. Certain DOS-based bit-for-bit cloning techniques keep all info on your hard drive. Modern Windows-based apps only pay attention to your used hard drive space and will just fill in extra partition space with blank data (zeros). You can also choose to make a complete clone of your drive (ie 40GB HDD into a 40GB back-up size) or just your data (ie 40GB HDD with 8GB used space into a 8GB back-up size).

The short answer is it depends on how you do it, but it is possible to see deleted files. If you're really paranoid about it, US gov't standard is 9 times of zero-filling before a hard drive can be tossed! :eek:

Someone on PC-Guide recommended "Eraser", so I downloaded it for free from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Having tried it out I'm rather pleased with it.
It will overwrite all the so-called "blank space" on any HDD using one of a number of options [35,7,5,3,1 passes or custom].
It has a built-in Explorer interface or you can use Windows Explorer to cut & paste or drag & drop into the Eraser window for Erasing.
It can be configured so that the listed objects remain listed or not when the erasing is completed, so it's easy to do them again in the future.
If you configure it to do so, in Explorer you can right-click on a file or folder and select "Erase" [Delete is still available] to overwrite the object so it is totally unrecoverable. If you right-click an a HDD you can select "Erase unused space".
It erases the unused space within the space allocated to a file.

The point of this?
Well, if there's no junk existing, there's nothing there even if the blank space is cloned.

I use "Simple Backup" [to CD-RW disks] which I believe only copies the [selected portion of the] "used" space.
I used the HDD manufacturers utility to write zeros to the C: drive and then restored a backup I'd just made.
That wiped the C: drive "unused space" pretty clean I believe.

Thanks for all of the help. I have been using "XXCLONE" 32-bit version to clone the hard drive. This runs in a DOS shell from inside Windows. Will try your suggestions... Understand that "Evidence Eliminator" is another good disk wipe program.