Do you overwrite each byte of your outdated HDs for privacy? Think again.
 

Did you know that you can recover data on magnetic media that's been written over up to nine times? These guys do - for a living.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/data_pr.html

Crazy, huh?

i melt down my old hard drives into paperweights

Yep, I throw mine into the fires of hell and they get fedexed to me next day air when they're finished.
:thumbsup

NO data will be recovered from my old HD.

I use the overwrite feature of pgp, i hear it works pretty well..

Another all-too human scenario: Panicky novelist loses four years of work to a malfunctioning hard drive. "Have you been backing up your computer?" Letourneau asks. "Yes," the writer replies, "I've been backing the computer as close to the wall as I can get it."

The best data removal program is called Eraser, and it's even open source freeware. It'll rewrite up to 255 times, so there's no chance of anyone getting through it. Especially those 9 times guys.

It's at www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

:1orglaugh

hahahahahaha

backed up to the wall

hahahahahaha

oh my.....


"yeah...the room is pretty clean"

hahahahahahha

twinkley

i wonder if they recover it because the original data had been on the drive "longer" than any of those 9 (or even 255) overwrites.

in any case, yeah, take a look at what the DoD and similar orgs do to their drives. :)

I take my old HD's to the woods for target practice with a few gun-toting nerds that work at Microsoft.

just melt the thing down...problem solved

Yup.