Jim: (and Trevor):  I know what secure measures you are talking about.  In
otherwards, you wish to completely do a secure "wiping" process whereby you
replace all the info with 0's and 1's and then repartition.  (As this has
nothing to do with partitioning and formatting.)  In our federal government
department (in Canada) we use a program by the RCMP called DFX which rewrites
(wipes) all the info on the existing drive (everything is rewritten on all
the sectors and tracks) with 0's and 1's three (3) times!  Then it is
repartitioned (which is another good security measure!)  Unfortunately, I do
not know off hand any third party software that does the same thing.  Perhaps
you should check for any kind of Norton Utility that would do it?  Hope this
helped.  Cheers...bev

"Tell me and I forget.  Show me and I remember.  Involve me and I
understand."   - Chinese Proverb

Beverley Saindon
Micro Support Specialist/Spécialiste en soutien micro-informatique
HRS LAN Management/Direction du RL de SRH
Network Management/Direction du réseau
Tel:(819)994-1827 Fax: (819)994-2188
http://ops.hq-ac.prv/opsnetwork/profiles/corporate.shtml
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"Quality Service is our Commitment"
<<La qualité du service est notre engagement>>
---------- Original Text ----------

From: "Jim Rebman" <[log in to unmask]>, on 1/29/2001 2:31 PM:
To: INET[<[log in to unmask]>]

Folks,

I need a little advice that is not directly related to assistive tech, so
if somebody who has some info for me could mail me off-list with this, I
would appreciate it.

My laptop is about to die and I have ordered a new one and I am trading in
the old one and need to find a way to ensure that the hard drive is
securely formatted with no possibility of somebody being able to recover
any data from it.

Does anybody know how to do this, or if there is some kind of utility I can
try?

Thanks,

Jim

---------------------------
James A. Rebman

Cognitive Levers Project
Center for Life-Long Learning and Design (L3D)
University of Colorado, Boulder

"In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth, while the learned
will find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists."
- Eric Hoffer