Erasing or re-formatting a hard drive

Thanks for the info on Dban. I ran across it while doing a little googling, but didn't know if it was what it claimed. I will try it now that it has a few testimonials!

The Feds and their unlimited resources (money and super computers)....can they retrieve data from a hard drive that has been wiped by one of these programs?

K

There is some speculation around this topic, basically there are MOD/DoD standards which specifies the number of passes to fully wipe the data off where it cannot be recovered. Although, to be 100% secure its best to degause it using a Magnetic field, although it will probably break it afterwards.

Forensic types use software that costs 1000s that can have incredible results in recovering from even a whiped drive. It's very hard to completely erase a hard disk apparantly, even with multiple passes. Over writing with "0"s then erasing again and doing this multiple times could work but it's very laborious. either that or a good degaussing or heat the disk up with a blowtorch and buy a new one.

We come across this a lot when working in healthcare and passing old PCs down to Africa and places. Eventually we gave up and just took the hard drive out. They could have the PC but had to get themselves some cheap new hard drives. We then chopped the actual disks to pieces with a bolt cutter.