strollin wrote:

It always amazes me how paranoid people are and how self-important they feel that someone/anyone would care enough about whatever they have on their hard drive to go to the trouble of recovering it after a format. I have given away/sold quite a few computers over the past 30 years and have simply re-installed the OS before relinquishing the computer. I personally don't see the need to destroy the hdd or even to nuke it with something like dban.

The odds that anyone would be interested in any data I have on my hdd enough to go to the trouble of recovering it are pretty close to nil so I don't worry about it.

It's similar to why having a gun for protection is silly or worrying unnecessarily about stranger child abduction. The odds are such that your gun will never be needed nor will your child ever be abducted.

Most people face the greatest risk of their lives driving their car to and from the grocery store but don't give it a second thought yet worry unnecessarily about someone wanting to recover their deepest secrets from their hard drive.

Howaboutnow wrote:

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Anyone who understands anything about computers knows that Formatting the disk does not wipe all the data off the disk.

LittleBill wrote:



anyone who understands computer knows that once your format and reinstall a computer, the likely hood of someone actually trying to recover the data on drive is practically 0.

Howaboutnow wrote:



I agree the likelyhood is very low but in the case of business espionage the likelyhood is much higher. But my initial only point and still my only point is that there is a misconception of what formatting does to a Hard disk. It does not clear all data off the hard disk. It just releases all the sectors and tracks so that they can be overwritten again. The old data is still there(where it hasn't been overwritten by new data) and can be retrieved relatively easily by an experienced computer person. Most home computer hard disks would not be worth the effort to try to recover the data unless yours was targeted for a specific reason. That risk level is what needs to be evaluated.

Writing non sensitive material(such as music, video or alternating 1's and 0's) on to a Hard Disk until it is completely full, after an intial formatting, and then formatting the disk the second time will completely erase any and all of the original sensitive material.

LittleBill wrote:



First we are not talking about business, no one mentioned that anywhere

and your comment

"Writing non sensitive material(such as music, video or alternating 1's and 0's) on to a Hard Disk until it is completely full, after an intial formatting, and then formatting the disk the second time will completely erase any and all of the original sensitive material."

this is not true either. i believe our software/hardware can pull data up to 3 concurrent passes of random data.

Thus DOD standard is 7 pass.

Data recovery that im talking about costs 10 of thousands of dollars.

CSI and shows similar make people think that its a 30 second process and they have everything. people have to stop thinking stuff they on tv is real

Howaboutnow wrote:



Little Bill,

There isn't a single software or hardware product that can recover data once it has been overwritten. What you are not informing RVNet members of is that unless every track and sector is completely overwritten then some residual data could posibly be found. But IMHO if it is so important to you that you have to be right down to infinitely small details then have at it. Fencing with windmills is not productive or appropriate on this forum.