Did I erase my hdds correctly?

[MojangYang]

Hi guys. I found multiple 350gb and 500gb hdds and want to erase, sell or reuse them.

so I simply backed up the data from each partion, and deleted the partions one by one in disk management,and reallocated all the monkey space into one single memory.

is all the data off the platter and overwritten or is it just deleted?

[Spotty]

7 minutes ago, MojangYang said:

so I simply backed up the data from each partion, and deleted the partions one by one in disk management

That won't delete any data off the drive. It will still physically be located on the drive, however what you have done is delete the address book that tells the drive where the data is located on the disk so it simply doesn't know that it is there. It's possible and very easy to recover the data from the drives with software.

You need to overwrite the data to remove it. There's plenty of software options available to overwrite data on a drive as a means of securely erasing the drive without physically damaging the drive. You can use DBAN (though unplug any HDDs you don't want erased so you don't accidentally delete data off them) or even programs like Piriforms CCleaner have data erasers built in these days.

 

7 minutes ago, MojangYang said:

and reallocated all the monkey space into one single memory. 

What? Monkey space?

Spoiler

[MojangYang]

17 minutes ago, Spotty said:

That won't delete any data off the drive. It will still physically be located on the drive, however what you have done is delete the address book that tells the drive where the data is located on the disk so it simply doesn't know that it is there. It's possible and very easy to recover the data from the drives with software.

You need to overwrite the data to remove it. There's plenty of software options available to overwrite data on a drive as a means of securely erasing the drive without physically damaging the drive. You can use DBAN (though unplug any HDDs you don't want erased so you don't accidentally delete data off them) or even programs like Piriforms CCleaner have data erasers built in these days.

 

What? Monkey space?

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh sorry stupid autocorrect I forgot to reread it

i was meant to say: reallocate all the space into one single partion

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, MojangYang said:

Oh sorry stupid autocorrect I forgot to reread it

i was meant to say: reallocate all the space into one single partion

that won't do it, you need to wipe the drive with zeros, use something like dban.