One of my friends sold her old computer, and within a few days found that she had been losing money saved in a number of her accounts. A huge amount of cash had been transferred to some fake account. After a lot of investigation, it was found that the hard drive in her computer had been the cause of it.

Wondering how?

Let me explain!

Though she had formatted her computer, all the files that she had saved earlier had been recovered using a recovery application. She had saved her bank account details on the desktop of her computer.

Contrary to the popular belief, all the data that was saved in a hard drive prior to formatting, is safe inside the hard drive and can be recovered with a few mouse click. So make sure that your data is out of reach after you sell off your hard drive. To ensure the same, perform a hard drive wipe. You can use any of the downloadable innumerable data eraser software for the same.

Similarly, there are situations when people discard a floppy, a CD/DVD, USB drive, an external drive, or some other storage media after merely formatting it, or when the media is not working. In such a situation, there is a potential risk to all the vital information that is saved in that media. Either a software can be used to recover formatted data, or services can be availed to retrieve data from any media. So, it is recommended to wipe your vital data from the media.