[Cagey]

Will formatting the drive erase all data? And, I've heard of utilities that will do a total wipe of the data that one chooses. I think Norton is one vendor who makes such a utility.

But, the thing is these crooks in Trenton are claiming that by dropping the computer the data was destroyed and that just doesn't ring true to me.

[Glenn]

But, the thing is these crooks in Trenton are claiming that by dropping the computer the data was destroyed and that just doesn't ring true to me.

Your instincts are right on. The bits don't fall off. I've personally witnessed a chemical solution that when applied to a magnetic surface like tape or a computer disk will reveal the binary data in a visible format which is then read by a highly specialized optical scanner. It's amazing what's out there.

[cryptical]

Formatting doesn't help, and overwriting isn't foolproof.

It depends on what your threat model is and how much it's worth to your adversaries to recover your data.

E-mail traverses several machines to get to you typically, so even securing the data on your mailbox machine may not be good enough.

End-to-end encryption works. It's a little extreme for most people, and there are all sorts of gotchas in implementation to worry about, but if you have the need you can afford the solution.

[Calpernia]

Yes, that is low level formatting. But, that takes hours to do. Well, with a server anyway.