Always Format your drives, Devices or computers

[jrgarrett]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3089343/security/resold-hard-drives-on-ebay-craigslist-are-often-stil...

[BirdDog]

I would even go far as do a wipe with something like CCleaner which writes 1's and 0's to the entire drive. Takes good while but worth it with any used drive.

[rickorama]

What?    PLEASE CLARIFY within the HughesBet CONTEXT!   

Thankj you for your time, consideration and cooperation.

Grateful,

Rick Orama

[maratsade]

I wonder if @Liz or @Amanda could close this very old thread....

[jrgarrett]

Yes!

[jrgarrett]

I think most of us Have those boxes full of Harddrives... Just because you never know when you might need the extra storage.. Or that back up of files. or maybe you just want to build a hobby system.. Lots of possibilities. But Security is important.

[Liz]

I have a CD from an old job with a program that wipes hard-drives: overwrites with 0s and such. Never had to use it though, because I also hoard my HDDs.

Thanks for the share, jrgarrett!

-Liz

[jrgarrett]

That would be called a Zero Fill or Low Level Format Tool.. Always handy.

[Pawnee County]

Delete the partition with fdisk or gparted then reformat it as a dos drive then fdisk it again poof all gone cannot be retrieved due to no partition to refer back to.  

[Gwalk900]

I have 10 internal drives in my main computer (Bertha), five have different operating systems, the remaining five ar data drives for assigned storage to the OS's.

[jrgarrett]

Actually you do not need a partition to reconstruct a file.. You can use a utility to dig out the files that have not been overwritten.

[jrgarrett]

Sound like you have plenty of storage.

[jrgarrett]

People install new Oses  delete partitions Format and forget about their files.. then you have to rescue those files.. most usually you can get them back unless its been wiped with a zero fill or the file has gotten overwritten by another file which usually does not happen immediately..

[Gwalk900]

I use the "military wipe" function of Dban to wipe my PATA and SATA drives.

Not to be used on SSD's so know your hardware.

[Gwalk900]

yup, just wiping the partition is not enough. (depending on desired level of "clean:)

Writing random 1's & 0"s repeatedly will do the job.

So will taking a hammer to the platters.

[jrgarrett]

Hammers work wonders and help with that pesky aggression when it comes to faulty hardware! Lol!

[jrgarrett]

Yes spinning platters are different from flash memory based storage.. Some utilities can cause them to wear quicker.

[jrgarrett]

This is mostly due to the extra bunch of reads and writes.

[Pawnee County]

Myself I keep stuff till it is so darn old no one wants it so I don't or can't sell anything anyway.  I still have and use an old HP Pavilion from the late 90s just to run my Canon LBP 430 printer I have on my network.  My Acer don't have a LPT1 Port to run that thing.  Once I get rid of a harddrive or PC it is because the thing just plain quit working.  Heck I still drive a 1986 Toyota 4WD Pickup. 

[jrgarrett]

Old stuff is the best! Especially if it out lasts a bunch of newer stuff! 🙂

[Gwalk900]

I have a Western Digital hard drive (PATA) that dates back to early 1999. It has thousands of hours on it. SMART indicates no big issues so far.

It serves as a "data drive" on Wife's computer.

Waste Not, Want Not (also applies to Beer ")  )