Rick Jay
Greater Springfield area, MA
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Joined: 02/02/2003
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Hi hershey,
As stated, formatting does not effect the data on the drive. Think of a library with it's card catalog. Reformatting is somewhat akin to blowing up the card catalog. The books are still there, but they're hard to find. You need to blow up the card catalog AND the books. Reformatting will not do this. (Those on a Mac, however, can use "Secure Erase" and the data will be securely removed from the drive.)
I highly recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke. It does a good job and it's free. It's part of the utilities included on the Ultimate Boot CD which I also highly recommend for anyone doing a lot of PC work. I never allow a HD out of my possession without completely wiping the drive.
While it's true that your system has been back for repairs a couple of times, this time it's going back for good so there's no telling where the HD may end up. It is possible that if you had any sensitive information on it that some dishonest employee could've tampered with it already. If you have any passwords that are really important, I think it would be prudent to change them ASAP. But you still want to wipe the drive before sending it back.
Good Luck with your new system,
~Rick
2005 Georgie Boy 3625 DS on a Workhorse W-22 (Class A)
Rick, Gail, 1 girl (12-Angel), 1 girl (7), 2 boys (8 & 5), 1 plump Golden Retriever.
2001 Honda Odyssey with Demco Aluminator tow bar & tow plate, SMI Silent Partner brake controller.
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jauguston
Bellingham, WA
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Joined: 07/03/2005
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Why don't you ask your case manager what they do with this type of return? My guess is they destroy them.
They replaced my DV 4000 with a DV 6700 a few weeks ago and I just sent it to them. If someone was going to steal something out of it they had already had three chances. I just shut it off and put it in the box.
Jim
Jim, Sharon and Buddy the Yorkie
1999 Gulfstream Sun Voyager 31' ISB Cummins 210 uprated to 275
Trippe-Lite 1800w inverter 4-6v GC batteries
3- Kyocera 130w solar panels
1987 Suzuki Samurai tintop Toad w/VW 1.6 turbo diesel power
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wa8yxm
Wherever I happen to park
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Joined: 07/04/2006
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There is but one way to insure they can't get the old data off the drive.. That is to "De-militarize" it per the US army's manual for such jobs.. This is a daunting task that involves drills, hammers, explosives, running over it with a tank, flaming it with a flame thrower and generally reducing it to atoms.
However there are several "Data scrubber" programs out there that do multiple over write operations on every sector of a disk,, Short of a tunneling electron microscope they make it kind of hard to steal data off a used drive
Nothin adds excitment like something that is none of your business
John is Near Kenwood TS-2000 housed in a 2005 Damon Intruder 377
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