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<blockquote data-quote="Digerati" data-source="post: 666016" data-attributes="member: 59833">Well you are talking hard drives, not SSDs. Again, you do not &quot;wipe&quot; SSDs. For hard drives, the worry is about &quot;residual magnetism&quot; that might represent 1s and 0s (data) being left behind.There is no such magnetic residue in SSDs. Technically, 1 pass is more than enough for a hard drive. A single pass will thwart the efforts of any readily available recovery software and it will take a &quot;determined&quot; forensic expert using highly sophisticated (read: expensive!) equipment to maybe successfully retrieve any data after that. And even then, it will be data clusters, not entire files. Note this is exactly why data recovery services for people who accidentally delete their precious data can cost many $100s or even $1000s! For the record, you don&#039;t even have to &quot;wipe&quot; a hard drive. In the past, I have just filled a drive with music files, did a &quot;quick&quot; format (to mark all the spaces as free again) then filled the drive with music files again. This is actually faster than wiping.&nbsp; &quot;IF&quot; there was any data left, it was only a spattering of tiny fragments - like one or two pieces here and there from several 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Only drives containing classified data of the utmost national security interests need more passes. But having been involved in supporting and destroying such data for many years, we just shredded the drives. Even now that I have retired from the military, if a civilian client is that concerned, we have access to one of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o" target="_blank">these</a> and be done with it.If the drives do not hold government secrets, industrial espionage information, or evidence of criminal activity, it is important to remember typical badguys are lazy opportunists. They go for the easy pickings. If they find a hard drive, they will scan it with one of those recovery programs I listed above, and if nothing exploitable or worth value is found, they will quickly move on to the next drive. They are not going to waste their time digging deeper, even if they have the equipment and expertise - unless they are targeting you specifically and know there is something of value on that drive.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Digerati, post: 666016, member: 59833"] Well you are talking hard drives, not SSDs. Again, you do not "wipe" SSDs. For hard drives, the worry is about "residual magnetism" that might represent 1s and 0s (data) being left behind.There is no such magnetic residue in SSDs. Technically, 1 pass is more than enough for a hard drive. A single pass will thwart the efforts of any readily available recovery software and it will take a "determined" forensic expert using highly sophisticated (read: expensive!) equipment to [U]maybe[/U] successfully retrieve any data after that. And even then, it will be data clusters, not entire files. Note this is exactly why data recovery services for people who accidentally delete their precious data can cost many $100s or even $1000s! For the record, you don't even have to "wipe" a hard drive. In the past, I have just filled a drive with music files, did a "quick" format (to mark all the spaces as free again) then filled the drive with music files again. This is actually faster than wiping. "[SIZE=5][U][B]IF[/B][/U][/SIZE]" there was any data left, it was only a spattering of tiny fragments - like one or two pieces here and there from several 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Only drives containing classified data of the utmost national security interests need more passes. But having been involved in supporting and destroying such data for many years, we just shredded the drives. Even now that I have retired from the military, if a civilian client is that concerned, we have access to one of [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o']these[/URL] and be done with it. If the drives do not hold government secrets, industrial espionage information, or evidence of criminal activity, it is important to remember typical badguys are lazy opportunists. They go for the easy pickings. If they find a hard drive, they will scan it with one of those recovery programs I listed above, and if nothing exploitable or worth value is found, they will quickly move on to the next drive. They are not going to waste their time digging deeper, even if they have the equipment and expertise - unless they are targeting you specifically and know there is something of value on that drive. [/QUOTE]

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