OT: Can Reformatting A Hard Drive To ext3 Destroy All the Data On It?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 18:16:00 +0930,
  Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 13:31 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: 
> > It makes no real difference - use the drives own secure erase feature if
> > you want to be sure, otherwise you've got no guarantee that everything
> > will be cleared - only the drive knows enough to do the job.
> 
> But do you know what the drive does when you use that function?  ;-\

Reading the drive back in should give you a good idea. If that isn't enough
of a check for you then you should just be destroying the drive.