8 Way Random Write really necessary?

[doctormelodious]

Greetings,

Once I have erased a hard drive with the "Zero All Data" option checked, is there really some way that someone could STILL recover old files from it (once I sell it)? I ask because I'd rather avoid waiting 36, 48, however many hours for Disk Utility to do "8 Way Random Write" on a 60GB drive.

Thanks!
DM

 

[eric2006]

Unless the person you are selling to is in the CIA, or has a lot of money, there's no way that they could get the data off. If you have the location of a secret government test site on your hard drive, then you should probably do that.

 

[doctormelodious]

Hi Eric. Thanks for the reply!

DM

 

[Mikuro]

Yeah. AFAIK there is no consumer-level software that can recover zeroed-out files. For professionals, though, it's relatively easy.

By the way, you can cancel the process at any time, so if two or three passes is enough to help you sleep at night, you can just let it do that.