Old Data

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Tue Apr 7 01:04:23 1998

On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:

> Except, that people may feel it's easier (and/or safer) to just destroy the
> machine than it is to try and make sure no one can read their data. What
> if some one told you, "yeah, I had one of those imsai computers, but I had
> it smashed up to make sure no one could get at my old tax returns." Not a
> pleasant thought.

I've held onto machines that I would've happily given away except for the
time involved to go through the stuff on the hard disk and clean it up.
This is a real problem. Somebody recently asked me for a solution to this
problem that could be easily communicated to the masses, and I couldn't
come up with one.

Reformatting the disk and installing a fresh O/S is probably the closest
approximation for a lot of people, but it has a few problems:

1) High-level formatting may leave data intact.

2) Installing the O/S doesn't install the drivers for any odd-ball
peripherals the machine happens to have in it.

3) 90% of users probably don't know how to do it.

What the world needs is a painless one button backup-and-clean program.

-- Doug
Received on Tue Apr 07 1998 - 01:04:23 BST