You work for a small city IT department and you are reviewin

You work for a small city IT department, and you are reviewing security procedures for data erasing and decommissioning computer hard drives. Of the following, which is the preferred method of making sure hard drive data cannot be recovered from a retired computer hard drive?

A. Data wiping

B. Hard drive destruction

C. Hard drive recycling

D. Reformatting the disk

Solution

Answer: A. Data wiping

A process that overwrites the entire hard drive with data (zeros or random characters) thus rendering it unreadable.
Wipe, in a computing context, means to render all data on a hard drive unreadable. The term is often used in reference to making data stored on a computer, smartphone or tablet inaccessible before disposing of the device.