Jul
No business really takes the time to clean a personal, and really… would you really want to trust your credit and financial and security information to a stranger who is getting paid just over minimum wage for a probable part time job……. Not belittleing anyone in that position, jut suggesting that you more so than that person are more interested in being sure all identifying info is removed from the personal……..
Here’s a low level cleaning program,,, it is a pay program but you really only need to use it one time so the trial period (free) will give you more than enough time to clean the HDD to a very, very clean state….
http://www.briggsoft.com/dsnoop.htm
Just download the free trial and clean the disk….. If you were in business of cleaning personal then purchasing the program would be of great benefit to you…….it is an excellent program……
Answer:
Truly, the data is practically never safe unless you were using full disk encryption before you put the data on it, but even then it could be accessed. The government has run into this problem, and they destroy their hard drives, and then look under an electron microscope and make sure that every single micro inch is either all positive or all negative. Basically, if someone really wanted to know what use to be on that hard drive, they could.
Answer:
Don’t trust anyone - or rather - leave it to someone else to take care of deleting your data. Do it yourself before handing it over.
Usually, the purchaser wont really bother trying to “un-erase” your data so its ok if you just delete your files and format all partitions.
Answer:
I doubt it.
Depending on the size of your hard drive, that could take days. I can't see anybody doing all that in the name of recycling.
Just take the hard drive out before you give it to them.
Answer:
You should always take out your hard drive and smash it into pieces Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList