Rather than drilling holes in a used HD or smashing it with a hammer, use a program that writes 'random' zeros and ones over and over again.

There is an open source Windows app called "eraser": Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows that allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. The patterns used for overwriting are based on Peter Guttmann's paper Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory and are selected to effectively remove magnetic remnants from the hard drive. Other methods include the one defined in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual of the U.S. Department of Defense, and overwriting with pseudorandom data. You can also define your own overwriting methods.

There is another I used for Mac, but I forget it's name.

After running a program like this, I can give the drive away to someone who can use it without fear of having my personal data revealed.

But I wouldn't give away or sell the drive with BiaB data on it unless I got written permission from Peter Gannon. It's a "do unto others" thing as well as a copyright thing.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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