CamperAndy

I call BS on this one, I would be in the 15% not recovered 100% of the time. Not going to happen if done properly. As for the replacement of the COMPANY hard drive you also have to be kidding they will not chase you. You returned the computer whole to the company minus the installed software which most IT departments hold so you could not reinstall it if you wanted.

My company uses EDS (Everything Done Slowly) and they deal with scores of computers a week that were crashed or screwed up and they Ghost a new image on the drive and send it back out. They have neither the time or the inclination to be detectives.

All the guy wants to do is prevent his personal stuff from being pasted to the next user of that computer. If they were really worried about trade secrets they would not have been on a lap top in the first place.

tool

Yeah that is exactly it...... It all actual fact I don't think there is really anything to worry about since I don't do online banking or anything like that.

I have made credit card purchases etc and that concerns me. There are quasi confidential e-mail conversations and instant messenger conversations with prospective employers etc.. hahaha

But they can probably read that stuff off the mail server anyway, maybe they actually already know I am leaving.
hahaha

It's more of a precautionary measure, there is definitely confidential info on the machine which I have no interest in tampering with, client profiles, credit information etc.... I have no intent of messing with their private info, I just want to protect mine. Maybe I am being over cautious, I just hear about identity theft etc....

butchb

I have used a program called Killdisk, supposedly wiping & writing over all data. If it was mine, just before I turned in my notice the laptop would somehow mysteriously quit working.

tool

Is it really that critical or am I just dreaming up bad scenarios?

Rob C

Thats like saying you are entitled to the motor of your company car as long as you replace it with another one.

wildcat

Only you can answer that.

It's critical enough for me to NEVER use my work computer for personal use.

I'm thinking if you did want to use a work laptop for personal use, you should probably buy your own hard drive for that machine prior to doing so, and only use the work hard drive for work.

TreeFarm

Interesting thread. It should be required reading for anyone who uses a computer at work. Rule of thumb: Never do anything on a work computer that you would not want the whole world to see.

Also, consider that in many large organizations, the system admin will be backing all or part of your machine up to tape on a regular basis, usually at night or on the weekend. All user control over what is on the machine is lost, as soon as it gets backed up.

staarma

We don't take a hard disk out so we can give it to someone else we take it out of a bad drive just to retrive the data from it like firmware or software code. Once that's retrived we throw the disk away. You can buy new hard drives for pennies these days. And yes, we do go through recovery efforts. We are a R&D company and all employees sign a NC/ND (non compete non disclosure) agreement when they get hired here. We cannot afford to have somone sending secrets to competitors, etc. or upon their departure just "deleting" all of their work, that we paid dearly for, from their hard drive. That is breaking the law and it will get you into trouble fast. We take it very seriously here and yes we will come after you.

xtoyz17

Right. I totally agree. My original point was that I couldn't see someone doing that to put it in another computer for another worker to use. I made that point when someone else had mentioned putting it in another computer after getting the laptop to put it back into the field.

What you're saying makes complete sense, I don't disagree with that all. We're both just making different points

rebee

I am no expert on this issue. If I needed to remove my information from a company computer, I would copy my data/emails...etc, then erase all the files, then run the disk defragmenter, located under Accessories then System Tools. This will rewrite to the placeses where the information was deleated. Most time a simple dlete just changes the name of a file and the data is still there untill it is over written.

Good luck
dale

staarma

Oh, sorry. Gotcha now. Sometimes I'm a little slow.

AlpineRAM

I would go to the IT department of your company and talk to them- usually we IT guys are very interested in keeping the stuff running.
If, like in the IT policies of one of my customers, a laptop is in use by a person leaving the company there are several options:

The (ex) employee buys the laptop - he has to bring it in and IT will do a clean reinstall without any company SW or data.
The (ex)employee is not interested in the laptop: IT does a clean install before handing it out to the next user.

If you think that your (ex)company has something in hand against you and you want to get rid of evidence- blast the laptop with 3 pounds of C4, grin and bear the consequences- but usually the company backups etc will safeguard the evidence...

If you just want to keep your personal info like credit card numbers secure ask your IT for how they want to handle it- usually if an ex-employee in a company like I stated above wants to erase the data himself the company has no objection- they will even sell him the old hard disk for a nominal fee after it has been wiped by IT in his presence. (This is to keep the company data safe from reappearing somewhere)


Just my 2c

AlpineRAM

tool

Like I said, this is not a matter of espionage or anything, just private info, credit card transactions, e-bay, ticketmaster, that sort of thing, which should be secure anyway, all I do know is that the first machine I had when I started at that company was a "hand me down" from a manager and their was definitely lots of stuff on that machine that I didn't want to see/ should never have seen. Not to mention a desk drawer full of former employee payroll information etc, seemed pretty unprofessional to me.

grantx5

Formatting the drive will not remove the information, it can be recovered. Yes, it would be very difficult and beyond what most folks can do but still...

To ensure the information is destroyed, software programs that do this work format the drive and then write new data to the disk thus permanently destroying the old information.

Either physically destroy the disk or get software that will write dummy data to every part of the newly formatted disk.

Mexstan

I have a computer that has died that I am going to give away. It can be resurrected, so I would like to delete some confidential info on the HD As it will not start, will it work to remove the HD and stick a strong magnet to the HD case in various places? What if I stick magnets to opposite sides of the case? Will that be sufficient to scramble any info?