> -----Original Message----- > From: T. R. Valentine > Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 8:28 AM > > Wiping completely clean (low level format) is what I've typically > seen. It is extremely difficult to remove user names completely > without doing so. Anybody remember when "low level format" meant something else--something that couldn't be done to IDE drives without completely destroying the drive? To corroborate this memory I had to look through some old-school websites [0]. Perhaps a better solution to LLF would be to do a zero fill on the drive, which means to put zero bits in every data portion of the drive. [1][2] This is nice because any residue from files that may be on the platters is completely overwritten and therefore unrecoverable by mere mortals. [0] http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatLow-c.html [1] http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/SDelete.html [2] http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave-discontinued/ <><><><><><><><><><> Joshua L. Olson WAE Tech Inc. http://www.waetech.com/ Phone: 706.210.0168 Fax: 413.812.4864 Monitor bandwidth usage on IIS6 in real-time: http://www.waetech.com/services/iisbm/