If I sell an external HDD, will formatting help?

[Harsky]

Since I'm practically fed up with my current external HDD, I decided to sell it on ebay but my only concern is that if I sell it, what's tp prevent people using powerful tools to extract the data from a formatted HDD?

I don't mind that they find ISOs and porn but I'd be damned that I'll let someone get something that I spent downloading hours on for nothing.

 

[Bob Evil]

I think you're over-thinking it, bro ... I doubt there's too many people who would do that to a random HDD they got on eBay lol

 

[Costello]

A low-level formatting would help.
Go to your HDD manufacturer website and look for some formatting tool in the downloads section.
Basically this will do something like filling all the hdd space with blank/dummy data. Should be sufficient.

 

[xJonny]

Erase it with 35-pass Guttman overwrite deletion

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method

e: Then format it 172 times.

 

[Westside]

Agreed. Now, I'm gonna tell you that certain files are even recoverable after formatting. However, no body is going to go through the complicated bull crap for that. Trust me. Formatting shouldn't take that long, just do it.

 

[xJonny]

Actually I would do overwrite scrubbing if it was me but nothing extremely complicated.

Excellent Windows tool I use: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php

 

[arctic_flame]

Agreed. Now, I'm gonna tell you that certain files are even recoverable after formatting. However, no body is going to go through the complicated bull crap for that. Trust me. Formatting shouldn't take that long, just do it.

If by "Complicated bull crap" You mean runnning a single program and leaving it for an hour....

Erase it using the tool posted just above me.

 

[Westside]

Agreed. Now, I'm gonna tell you that certain files are even recoverable after formatting. However, no body is going to go through the complicated bull crap for that. Trust me. Formatting shouldn't take that long, just do it.

If by "Complicated bull crap" You mean runnning a single program and leaving it for an hour....

Erase it using the tool posted just above me.

What I mean is that those tools are usually useless in recovering and does things half way.

 

[leetdude_007]

Can you still recover the data if you write your whole hard drive with random 1s and 0s? If not, I will scream WTF to express much confusion.

 

[Westside]

Can you still recover the data if you write your whole hard drive with random 1s and 0s? If not, I will scream WTF to express much confusion.

The point is that the 1s and 0s are not random at all.

 

[superrob]

Theres a old dos program called "Killdisk".
Its overwriteing every sector with 1 and then formats the disk

 

[Harsky]

Just a thought but these programs are dedicated to formatting the drive so that nothing can be recovered. But what happens if I MOVE the files from my external HDD to my PC and then delete it from there?

 

[superrob]

Just a thought but these programs are dedicated to formatting the drive so that nothing can be recovered. But what happens if I MOVE the files from my external HDD to my PC and then delete it from there?

They would be recoverable.

 

[leetdude_007]

oops. I wrote incorrectly. filling an HD with a bunch of garble and declaring it empty should be sufficient, right? RIGHT? If not, I will lose my mind. The CIA is probably on my tail.

*hides*

 

[superrob]

Well when you delete stuf.. its kinda just hidden. Its only away when something else is writen over the sectors..
So yes formatting and filling it up with useless things should delete all traces.

 

[arctic_flame]

Just a thought but these programs are dedicated to formatting the drive so that nothing can be recovered. But what happens if I MOVE the files from my external HDD to my PC and then delete it from there?

It copies the files and marks the space as unused. Meaning all the files are still recoverable, now from 2 places - your HD and the removable HD

 

[Harsky]

I used killdisk to try out on a memory stickwith a couple of unused files.

How come it still has the files.

EDIT: Oh wait, I used WIPE instead of KILL