Sam asked:

I recently sold my computer through an auction site. Before it was sold I formatted the drives, then ran clean disk security (a hard drive deleter) many times (over 35 passes I believe). I then tested it to see if I could recover any files with programs I got over download.com and retrieved nothing. Tested it by deleting a file, then ran the recovery programs, and that file showed up; ran clean disk security and i could no longer recover it.

Would you say that my personal information is safe from the person I sold it to? Would there be any way for them to realistically retrieve my old files? Such as taking it to a data recovery center or tech support guys. Or do these cleaners really knock everything out?

Note: I remember finding something on the drive though – it was a folder of zeros that werent very big in file size.
Robert – yes, it’s already gone.

Adnan – so data recovery centers should be able to retrieve the files even though the drives free space was over written after formatting? I know it’s probably unlikely that the buyer would get data recovered for that price, but still knowing that all of my conversations with loved ones, credit card information and account passwords are there it makes me uneasy. My life was on that computer.
RC – how sure are you of that?