On 26 May 2006 at 7:31, Chuck Andrews wrote: > files in the "My Documents" folder etc. but are you deleting all of your > data. If you have nothing confidential on your computer then you can safely > give it away or sell it without formatting its hard drive.
Sorry, but that is just wrong period. If you've had your computer for any length of time, I can pretty much guarantee you, there is something confidential on there somewhere. And even if it's not confidential, in the right (actually wrong) hands it can cause you damage through identity theft. In the simplest example, you keep your current ISP and give computer to someone else, they recover your email info and address book and send a nasty letter using your email account to all the people in your address book. Just imagine coming to work on monday morning to find out your boss received a nasty email ostensibly from you, telling him/her that (s)he is a so and so (fill in your expletive of choice). > Many will disagree and assure you that all confidential data can be gotten > rid of without a format and reinstall. I have my opinion and they have > theirs and it is the seller's choice, not the buyers. Anyone who actually believes that is misinformed. Any computer person that does not inform their clients of this fact is doing them a HUGE disservice bordering on negligence IMO. If you've never used data recovery software, you have no idea on the level of stuff that can be recovered. If you use data recovery hardware, you can get back even more, even to the tune of 5 or 6 year old data that's been overwritten many times or formatted several times. I always recommend clients run something like dban http://dban.sourceforge.net/ as it will reliably clean the drive as per various government standards. -- Harondel J. Sibble Sibble Computer Consulting Creating solutions for the small business and home computer user. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (use pgp keyid 0x3AD5C11D) http://www.pdscc.com (604) 739-3709 (voice/fax) (604) 686-2253 (pager) -- ---------------------------------------- To Change your email Address for this list, send the following message: CHANGE WIN-HOME your_old_address your_new_address to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note carefully that both old and new addresses are required.
