qrk wrote:

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:28:40 -0500, me wrote:

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in
:

me wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote in
:

I just got a notice that my ThinkPad has finally shipped.

I promised my old Sony Vaio to a granddaughter.

What is recommended to scrub it of client files and PSpice?

I wouldn't want proprietary information to fall into the wrong hands
if she lost it.

...Jim Thompson

fdisk , format c:

No. All that does is rewrite the partition data, file allocation tables,
etc. Data sectors will be marked as empty but not overwritten and can be
read with low level tools.



Sure, it rewrites partition data and FATs. The reloading writes on the
disk. More than adequate for giving to granddaughter....

Simple tools can still recover data. Jim is worried about the computer
getting into the hands of someone who has these tools. Heck, a ten
years ago my work colleague wrote up a low-level disk reader in an
evening so we could recover some data off a buggered drive. The new
tools make this really easy. You need to scrub the free space after
reloading the OS.

---
Mark

Better to scrub the WHOLE disk BEFORE reinstalling the OS - this would be
more thorough and probably quicker too. It can be hard to figure out all
the weird places your data will end up - swap space, system directories,
slack space in between the end of a file and the end of the last sector of
that file, etc. etc.

Chris