Interesting story On the other hand while the employee was a hero in saving the data he also at the same time exposed the confidential data to a number of people who might have actually stolen it without the company realizing it I guess.

It’s none the less an interesting story, do you happen to have a link ? I would like to read it.

This story reminds of the old movies when the hero and villain concepts used to intertwine a bit in the plot line and by the end of the movie the main character who started out an obvious villain is cheered as a hero.

After finding out that his local IT department had donated it to charity, he literally tracked down the hard drive and retrieved the information. One of the rare instances where “not” using a wiping utility had saved an employee’s career.

Don’t feel bad about, that was exactly what an unconditional format used to do in the past but Microsoft suddenly changed their behavior and, well, the change wasn’t very well advertised.

In any case any disk wiping tool should be okay (basically a tool that actually 0s every byte on the hard drive). Some do this multiple times to ensure that data cannot be retrieved not even in a laboratory setting.

I searched and the first hit was a free tool: http://sourceforge.net/projects/disc-wipe/ which should do the trick perfectly

I’m one of those people who thought formatting would wipe out all data in a drive. I guess I’m wrong. What utility would you suggest for complete erasure? If I wanted to sell my old PCs, I want to sell the drives with it as well.

sorry to hear about your hard drive, unfortunately there is no clear answer for this. In the event of confidential data such as business data one must weigh in the risk against the benefit. What would be the harm if that data gets retrieved? if the data could cost you customers and worst put you legally liable, voiding the warranty might be a small price to pay to ensure your data is safe.

Asking for the drive back is an option though in my experience they’ll come up with all sorts of excuses not to do it.