PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay

On 3/28/2017 6:38 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: Not unusual. The more people crow about it the more hammers will swing on good hardware that could otherwise be repurposed. I worked @ a company which was famous for their what I call Tidy-bug attitude. They gathered up a lot of stuff about 6 months in and make a huge pile of free take stuff at the back door. including one techs private stuff while he wasn't at his desk (he had permission) and several other such small nits. but the satisfying bit of karma for this old hoarder was that they insisted on taking all the disk drives out which were of course "sensitive" and rather than hook them to a Linux machine or such with a wiper program, insisted on actually ball peening them. just so sad. They had three drives with irreplaceable no backed up software and pulls I hate to take satisfaction but I just don't work the way of ignorant solutions being the way to go because they seem simple. This one really bit them in the ass. An intelligent solution of wiping the hardware and then checking would have worked since all were sata or Pata or IDE drives easily readable. but none of their data got out in the exercise. thanks Jim