Writing 0's to the drive not securely erasing data on HDD?

I've read that special equipment can recover it, which is why they have other algorithms to overwrite data with in an HDD? How does it go about recovering something that has been written 0's all the way through? Is this FUD?

It doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps you guys can help me out.

 

It isn't a straight 0 or 1. If it was the data would be unrecoverable. There are high tolerances between 0's and 1's. If you rewrite with all 0's, some of those 0's are going to be closer to 1's than others. Those would be the 1's that were written over.

 

I see, thanks for the reply

 

Zero'ing a hard drive with a single pass with cross check is enough to stop 99% of the population from recovering any data on the platters. Unless the NSA is after you, you don't have to worry about your precious MP3's being recovered.

http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted

 

Exactly, I only zero out the drive when formatting for an OS prep. I prefer to have a drive as clean from any left over data as possible.

 

you don't need to go that far if all you are doing formatting prior to a clean OS install.

Overkill

 

To say the VERY least!

Gary

 

Only time I would zero a drive is if I was donating, gifting, or selling a computer with a hard drive that had some personal information on it. Otherwise, anything more is just trivial.

 

If it makes the man feel safe, then it's his time to waste, haha.

 

I no longer make gifts, donations, or other transfers of used hard drives, period.

 

I would zero out the drive several times. Then remove the drive from the computer. Drive a railroad spike through it. Then take the drive with the spike in it and throw it into an industrial steel-melting oven and reduce it to a liquid. Then when it cools, take the molten slab and put it in a locked safe. Then have the safe shot into the sun.

Ontrack will never get to my vacation pictures.

 

^^ That ... is a sensible and guaranteed recommendation to work ALL the times

cheers ...

 

I prefer to eat my HDD's. If they want my data they have to go through me. Literally.

 

I just install a copy of WindowsME on the drive...once ME is on a drive it virtually guaranteed to crash the minute someone tries to read from it

 

The hard drives up in heaven must be crying over how they were laid to rest after seeing this thread.

 

You should see the NSA approved hard drive degaussing and destruction machines in action! Now that's some hard drive carnage! The next best thing is to see a hard drive liquefied. Of course, those are all more humane than installing Windows Me on a hard drive!

 

http://www.monstermarketplace.com/Computers/Landing3343a240.html