Computer disposal and confidential information The facts about data wiping
Data wiping is the process by which the information on your hard drive is permanently deleted. This goes beyond simply reformatting the drive, and should not be taken lightly. The information on a drive that has been cleared by traditional methods (deleting files or even formatting the drive) can be recovered easily by anyone skilled at data recovery.
Data wiping may seem like a procedure only necessary for government agencies, or big corporations - but it's not. The information on your computers, no matter how innocuous it may seem to you, in the wrong hands, could lead to large-scale identity theft, the loss of industry secrets, or multitude of other frauds.
The procedure itself is done by exposing the drive to alternating magnetic fields which overwrite the original "erased" data with random patterns. The difference between a good wipe, which is 90% unrecoverable, and a DOD wipe is in the number of times the drive is re-written over with random patterns. The more times it is overwritten, the better, but the longer and more costly the process is.
