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I'm trading some stuff I no longer use for some guitar equipment (effects pedals, etc.) and one of the things I am trading is an external hard drive that I no longer use. I've only ever used that for extra storage so I highly doubt there has ever been any kind of personal information stored on there but, before I make the trade, I just wanted to ask if deleting files from an external hard drive completely erases them or not? I would, obviously, want to ensure that nothing at all was left on there just to be on the safe side.

colchar wrote:I'm trading some stuff I no longer use for some guitar equipment (effects pedals, etc.) and one of the things I am trading is an external hard drive that I no longer use. I've only ever used that for extra storage so I highly doubt there has ever been any kind of personal information stored on there but, before I make the trade, I just wanted to ask if deleting files from an external hard drive completely erases them or not? I would, obviously, want to ensure that nothing at all was left on there just to be on the safe side.

It doesn't, nor does a simple re-format. A "regular" person would not be able to recover them, but someone with a tiny bit of skill could recover your old files.

Here is an article on how to use a permanent file eraser.
http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... t-rid.html

Thanks. This was only ever used for storage, like a huge CD or floppy disc, but I will feel better having wiped it completely clean.

My husband always uses one of those programs that DukeUsul listed to write 1s and 0s all over the disk several times. If you want to know which program exactly he uses, I can ask.

A good disk scrubbing and the peace of mind is always a nice thing.

I downloaded the free one and will use it later one once I've made sure there is nothing on that drive that I don't have copied elsewhere (that is going to be a long and tedious process). Hopefully it erases any trace of anything that was on there (mostly stuff for school anyway) and then I can trade it while having some piece of mind.