Clearing the unallocated disk space

[Tim]

On Sun, 2014-11-16 at 22:17 -0600, g wrote:
> hard disk drive manufactures _are_not_ NSA. you _are_not_ NSA.
>  
> they do not connect hdd's to computers and try to read drives to
> see what is on them. to do so is a waist of their time.

There have been cases of people getting refurbished drives which did
have the previous owners data on them.

There's all sorts of data on a drive that you want to keep private,
without even thinking of nefarious reasons.  Personal mail, addresses,
family photos, insecurely cached data pertaining to banking, or other
data that can lead to identity theft.

If the drive was cheap enough, and you've had enough life out of it
before it went west, it's worth considering just wrecking it.  But if it
were fairly new, or horribly expensive, then I would consider wiping (or
filling it with junk files) and returning it.

-- 
tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp

Linux 3.17.2-200.fc20.i686 #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 18:28:00 UTC 2014 i686

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point trying
to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.