Gale and Velma and all others! I would not depend on that statement as it is totally FALSE! Formatting your drive DOES NOT remove any information whatsoever - it only marks new tracks. All the data remains on the drive and CAN be accessed with the right tools. I did that for a living at one time! The only way to 'remove' data from your hard drive so that I can not get it off (as well as any competent technician) is to write over the top of it with new data - the more times, the better. Sorry to pop your false sense of security!!! And Gale, yours is exactly the attitude that people that steal other people s identities are looking for. You would be surprised at the types of data that are sitting on your hard drive without your remembering or even noticing it! Good luck in the future with that security attitude! Fair warning! Dave Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:35:25 -0500 From: Gale Gorman <gale_gorman@me.com> Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] Destroying Hard Drive. To: vjspringer@aol.com Cc: Roots@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <321181E6-E753-4118-92F7-88C6C850C394@me.com> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Velma, If you are concerned about someone retrieving the data from your hard drive, just simply re-format it and it will be absolutely empty and ready for someone to load new stuff. If the hard drive no longer works, why bother? In my opinion this sort of safety is much ado about nothing. I certainly don t consider myself or my data to be of that much interest to anyone. Gale Gorman Houston