Make sure your old drives are clean...

[gcutler]

http://earthlink.com.com/2100-1040-980824.html?tag=newsfeed&subj=technews&part=earthlink&type=pt

I usually fdisk to remove the partiton, and then re-fdisk to create the partition and reformat. I wonder if that is good enough?

[James_F]

I received a "refurbished" drive from Quantum a couple years ago that had someones windows 95 on it. I was able to run Quicken and see all their financial data. I called Maxtor up and they said that it was their mistake and send me a new drive overnight. Its amazing to me that they didn't do a low level format on the thing at least. :shrug:

[raj2001]

Originally posted by gcutler
http://earthlink.com.com/2100-1040-980824.html?tag=newsfeed&subj=technews&part=earthlink&type=pt

I usually fdisk to remove the partiton, and then re-fdisk to create the partition and reformat. I wonder if that is good enough?

That's NEVER good enough if you have sensitive data on it. Removing the partitions still leaves the data on the drive. although there will be no filesystems for an OS to readily read it, you can still use data recovery software to get data from such a drive.

What you need to do is "zero out" the drive. In DOS/Windows I used to use Norton utilities, which wrote ones and zeroes to the drive three times each (a "Government" wipe). I don't know if the new versions of Norton utilities still have that feature.

In Unix/Linux you can just use the DD command to write zeroes to the drive. Do it a couple of times just for safety.

I know some companies that zeroed out the drives, then opened them up and bent up and broke the platters and scratched them up, totally destroying them, making the data difficult, if not impossible to retrieve.

I have an old TiVo 40 gig drive to sell, but I am wondering if I should wipe it first, to make sure all the pr0n is gone ;)

[Bogy]

Originally posted by gcutler
I usually fdisk to remove the partiton, and then re-fdisk to create the partition and reformat. I wonder if that is good enough?
Was there anything interesting on those drives? :D

[James_F]

Maybe we should ask Peter Townshend?

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=2031052

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Bogy

Was there anything interesting on those drives? :D

Well I used those drives studying/practicing for my MCSE exams in the mid-late 90s. So you are going to get alot of MS-Exchange mail from John Doe to Jane Doe. If you see words like , "tytuturtiutyityityuiri" or "qwwrteutyikjtsdfutyiy", it ain't a mistake :D

[Bogy]

Originally posted by gcutler
Well I used those drives studying/practicing for my MCSE exams in the mid-late 90s. So you are going to get alot of MS-Exchange mail from John Doe to Jane Doe. If you see words like , "tytuturtiutyityityuiri" or "qwwrteutyikjtsdfutyiy", it ain't a mistake :D
Its gotta be code!!! :D

[MarkA]

"I usually fdisk to remove the partiton, and then re-fdisk to create the partition and reformat. I wonder if that is good enough?"

Not even close. You need a software problem that will "zero" the drive, overwrite all the data with zeros. Even that MAY not be enough, though it should be adequate for all but the most sensitive government data. Destrutive erasure (zero the drive, run it over a continuous running degausser, then drive over it, and finally burn it) is ideal, but lowers the resale value :)

Seriously, what you need to do is zero the drive - for all consumer purposes, this makes it 100% clean.

[Mike123abc]

I have thrown away a few drives in the past, I take a hammer to them and smash them up pretty good. While the government could still read it, I do not think someone would pull it out of the dump and go to the expense/effort of trying to recover the data.