Permanent Deletion to Protect Client Records

[jamesrwrightiii]

I do accounting and have a consulting business on the side. I wanted to completely erase my hard drive on my old machine so I can give it to charity. I wouldn't care so much if it was my own stuff on the PC. I just want to be sure that no one is able to obtain anything pertaining to my clients.
I don't see the sense of getting a new hard drive if I can completely oblterate using boot and nuke. I have a new laptop so its no big deal if the machine was tied up for a few days.

On the old PC I ran DOD Long Version Twice (total of 14 passes)
and the PRNG option for a total of 25 additional passes.
Is everything completely off of the drive?

 

[Robbie]

if it isn't after all that it never will be...

I'd say that was much more than what is needed to completely wipe the drive and make the data almost certainly unrecoverable.

When you say 25 passes with PRNG do you mean 25 rounds of one pass or did you run the PRNG program 25 seperate times? I sometimes have difficulty getting my head around passes / rounds.