Students at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science recently looked into 158 disk drives obtained from eBay. Among other data they found:
Graduate student researchers found a "widespread lack of awareness about how to effectively remove sensitive data from hard drives before recycling or discarding them." It is estimated that 4.5 petabytes or 4.5 thousand terrabytes of data reside on "retired" drives, many of which get shipped off to China and elsewhere in the world.
Tom Adelstein -- a writer, hacker and industry veteran of long standing -- decided to create a simple Linux-based solution to the problem: DiskZapper. It comes in a variety of models: DiskZapper Safe, the basic version; DiskZapper Headless, which lets you wipe a drive without hooking up a keyboard, monitor or mouse; and DiskZapper Extreme, which takes ten passes to make sure everything is wiped off a drive. All three come in floppy and CD image flavors. Each flavor is for sale at the site, and available for free download as well.
Proceeds go to support LinuxLobby.org.