[UFO Chicago] recommendations for completely erasing a hard drive?

[Richard Lynch]

On Mon, May 28, 2007 8:52 pm, Brian Sobolak wrote:
> A friend has offered to donate a computer to me but wants to
> completely
> wipe the hard drive before he does.  A google search turns up a
> truckload of options, of course.  Anyone have suggestions on a LiveCD
> or
> Windows program to use to totally wipe a hard drive?

I'm not an expert, but just based on what I've been able to pick up
and my analysis over the years...

Depends on your trust level and how much effort you want to put into
it...

I mean, a hard drive with 1,000,000 customer credit card numbers on
it, and a had drive with a bunch of freely-available bad pr0n on it
are rather different in terms of privacy... :-)

Somebody somewhere with enough time and money can recover any hard
drive data, probably, no matter what you do to it, short of melting
the dang thing down to slag.

Honestly, a simple "format" should do the trick, for 99% of real world
needs.

A low-level format will wipe out all the data -- that's what it's for
-- and I believe only very expensive tools and experienced expert will
be able to recover anything from that.

Almost any of the other easily available tools probably do about the
same level of formatting as low-level format, for all intents and
purposes.

But if they make you feel better, go for it.

-- 
Some people have a "gift" link here.
Know what I want?
I want you to buy a CD from some indie artist.
http://cdbaby.com/browse/from/lynch
Yeah, I get a buck. So?