Concerned about the info on my hard-drive. How do I protect myself?

[arto]

Hi all,
I have come to the conclusion that I need to replace my harddrive. It is under warranty, so thats a good thing.

My concern is I want to totally wipe the harddrive before I send it off to western digital. I am not interested in my information being recovered off my drive after I send it to them.

Anyone have any tips on how to do this? I recall that in PGP 7 there was a feature that made a certain number of passes over the hardrive to delete things more permanently but I would like to totally erase the whole operating system before I send it to them. Thanks for any advice in advance, I really appreciate it.

Jon

 

[Grenage]

Aye there are Tools that allow this, writing lots of Random 0's and 1's over the drive multiple times. I believe Norton calls it a Government Wipe.

 

[paparazi]

Using Western Digitals own FREE Hard drive utility tool to LOW LEVEL format should be sufficient to completely wipe clean. (to all intense and purposes) unless of course you are a top government agent and the Hard drive may fall into the hands of the KGB. LOL
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[KimLeece]

Yup - paparazi is right - a low level format will give the cleanest disk that is possible with software. However, I recently saw a program on the BBC about a data recovery company - they did work for the goverment and police (computer forensics) and the chap from there said the only way to make a hard disk COMPLETELY unrecoverable was to physically smash it to bits with a hammer - although I suppose that would void your warranty! If the KGB might be involved though - maybe it's worth thinking about!!

Kim Leece.

 

[arto]

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate it. *runs off to smash harddrive*