Can preclear prepare a disk for sale?

[tucansam]

Will preclear securely overwriite data on a disk, for example one that is being disposed of or resold?

 

Thanks.

 

[BRiT]

I think there was a version that had a secure wipe functionality setting.

[JonathanM]

Simply writing and verifying all zeros with the standard preclear routine is secure enough for most cases. You would need special equipment and software that is rather expensive to recover anything sensible. If you think you could be the target of some government action, you probably should physically destroy the disk instead of selling or disposing of it intact.

[tucansam]

Thanks.  Not government action.  I usually take older or broken disks to the shooting range for destruction.  But I have a few that are relatively new I may try to sell, or give to friends to repurpose.  Just wanted to make sure any private data would be wiped "well enough" if I preclear them first.

 

Thanks.

 

[Frank1940]

You can actually make it very difficult for even the three-letter Gov Agencies to recover anything if you do three preclear passes.  The extra writes help to reduce the readability of the 'sideband' residue magnetism.  

 

IF you Google   "software that wipes hard drive completely", you can find many free programs that will do an even better job.   Just be sure that you select an erase option that does more than just write zeros.  (Preclear will do this for you!)  You need a random pattern of ones-and-zeros to do the best possible job.