Computer Question

[AntMan530]

I know reformating is the beginning of deleting, but it doesnt do it permanently. Is there another way to do it without destorying the hard disk?

We're a non profit and we're donating all of our computers to a church. There were sensitive information on it, but I've formatted the hard drives, my supervisors are saying that's not enough.

 

[conehead433]

Maxtor's Maxblast had a feature where you can completely overwrite the drive. Before formatting you could have used any one of several software data shredders. It supposedly takes about 7 overwrites before the data is completely unrecoverable.

 

[Umberger]

DBAN is what I use. You can make a bootable floppy, which makes it easy to do several computers.

EDIT: DBAN has several data destruction methods, including writing the hard drive with all 0's, all 1's, random data, and a combination of several passes of each. It makes data virtually unrecoverable.

 

[Steve]

The only way to really do it is to destroy the hard drive. Short of that, use the hard drive maker's zero-fill (aka low-level format) utility. Use it more than once if you like.

 

[Evadman]

Thermite.

 

[atybimf]

Hammer.

 

[TraumaRN]

Hard drive meet baseball bat. Baseball bat met hard drive.

 

[PinmasterJay]

This thread I stumbled upon in GH yesterday has a good discussion on this