If you have been using the computers systems for quite a long time, then you must have upgraded its hardware components such as hard disk, processor, etc. Most of you must be using a different hard disk than the one that you had when you first purchased the PC. The reason behind this is that you may have sold it to somebody for a new, compact, and more efficient hard disk. But have you ever thought that what happens to that hard disk once you give it to somebody. Yes on your part, you may have removed the content (files and documents) from the hard disk. But, this data can be recovered and misused by some unsocial elements. For avoiding such situations, you should use a third-party  drive wipe software  to erase the hard disk.

Consider a scenario wherein you want to upgrade from your 40-GB IDE hard disk to a new 320-GB SATA hard disk. You transfer all the important data such as documents, emails, invoices of tax returns, photos, bank account details, and other miscellaneous data. Then, you format the hard disk using the in-built Windows utility and sell it through an online auction site. After some weeks or so, you find few photographs of yours on the Internet in some funny (but sleazy) email forward. You have no idea how your photographs got there.

Cause:

The cause of this situation is that even though you formatted the hard disk, the other person may have recovered the data using data recovery tools. Actually data can still be recovered from a storage media even if it is formatted, as long as no new data has been saved on it. So, to ensure that your storage devices are not misused by such people you should always use a third-party file eraser to wipe off your hard disks, pen drives, etc. Such tools are able to wipe out the hard disk in such a way that it is impossible to recover data using any data recovery tool.