Be careful when you sell a computer

[Larwee]

Many people sell their computers without being aware that they still contain some very sensative personal information.

A lot of people are under the false impression that all information is deleted when a hard drive is reformatted.

Security experts suggest that you should not sell a computer if you can't securely delete your data. There is software that will securely remove data and there are professionals who can do it for you.

This article has more details Second-hand PCs still full of sensitive data - vnunet.com

[TxDon]

What at timely post.

My wife just bought a Dell laptop off of eBay. The HD was suppose to have been reformatted, but the Seller just deleted files...bought they missed a few.

I'm sure they wouldn't like people looking over some of their personal data I found on it.

If you're selling a computer, better use a shredding program!

[Adulu]

I agree with you.
We should know all of HD data could restored possibility from police tv show

[dc dalton]

Best way to 'whack' a hard drive permanently is to use a program that does an NSA level disk wipe. I use gdisk ... if you search around on the internet you can find it, it was part of one of the Norton Ghost programs a few years back. It fits on a floppy and it will do a full NSA disk wipe that will remove everything