[KLUG Members] Formatting a drive: is it clean?

[yvh11a]

I'd say it depends on who you figure is going to want that data, how 
badly they're going to want it, and how much it could hurt you to have 
it seen.  If it's stuff that anybody can get by calling on the phone and 
asking for it or Googling your website, formatting might be all you 
need.  If it's stuff that could embarrass your company, shred and then 
wipe (this is what I'd do).  If it's stuff that might put your company 
out of business, shred, wipe, take a sledgehammer to the drive itself, 
and then melt the pieces.  See where this is going?

Google has thousands of secure deletion tools.  I've heard good things about
Shred --> man shred
Darik's Boot & Nuke -->  http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Steve V.

> I have a general question. We have several old pc's here at work that 
> we are going to clean up (format) and give to our employees for home 
> use if they want them. These are really old pentium II's that are just 
> hogging up space. At one time, we had some private financial data on a 
> couple of them. Will formatting alone erase all of this or do I need 
> to "wipe" the drives? I know a majority of people are not going to be 
> able to get data off of a hard drive but I'd rather be safe than sorry.