On Fri, 2010-10-08 at 13:59 -0600, Linuxguy123 wrote: > Its a new drive. I'm returning it for a refund. Well, if you're concerned about drive content, you should probably discuss this with who you're returning it to. You may be able to bring it in, verify it's dead, and physically destroy it while you both watch, then get a replacement. If you don't have an option like that, you have to consider what you're trying to protect. Passwords? You could simply change them. Private personal data from casual snoopers who might get your drive, in a recycled form? I dare say that erasing the contents, overwriting with something else (perhaps something quite tantalising in itself), would be enough to stop the curious from finding anything else, or even bothering to look. Confidential corporate data? You should probably just bite the bullet, destroy the drive and buy a new one. Of course that's going to be galling if the drive is only recently deceased. But, I don't think that the average hacker getting a replacement drive from your shop you returned a drive from, who resell a dud drive without any care, or the drive manufacturer refurbishing/recycling it, is going to have the wherewithal to forensically recover interesting data from a well scrubbed drive. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines