The day I realized I'd been formatting hard drives wrong for 3 years

I was helping a new guy wipe a batch of old office computers last Tuesday and he asked why I was using the quick format instead of the full one. I told him quick format was fine because it still deletes everything... but he pulled up a guide showing how quick format just hides the data and a full one actually overwrites it. All those supposedly 'clean' drives I handed out to employees probably still had their old files recoverable. Has anyone else found out they'd been doing a basic task wrong for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

elizabethg187d ago

Did you try using a disk wiping tool instead?

alice_kim7d ago

My brother used a disk wiping tool on his old laptop and honestly it felt like overkill for a regular person. Unless you're selling government secrets or something, a simple format should be fine for most of us. I just use the built-in reset option on Windows and it works well enough for getting rid of my tax returns and cat pictures. Maybe if you're donating the drive to a stranger it makes sense but for your own use it seems like extra work.