As Chas said it all depends on the contents of the HDD. If there are any On Line Banking or other financial records I would wipe them with a DoD Spec Wiping Utility. I don't care if it takes 16 hours for this to run they can be left to do their own thing while you get on with other work.
Depending on the stored data you may find it better to junk the HDD's and replace them with new off the shelf units and leave them blank. That's what we do when we dispose of computers here remove the HDD fit something like a 40 or 80 GIG drive depending on what the M'Board will support and sell them off without an OS installed.
The removed drives if they have no use to one of the Company Staff get dismantled and the platters destroyed. The rest of the parts can go where you like and I tend to give these to a local Data Recovery House for use when & if needed.
Just remember that no matter what you do it's always possible to recover data if the person that is trying has enough money & time to spare to do this.
OH don't forget about the Address Books either one Government department sold off non security related systems and they had the States Premiers Personal E-Mail The equivalent to a US State Governor on at least one system and the young kid kept sending E-Mails to this guy asking for money. When he was eventually tracked down it was found that he owned that data as the Government Department concerned has sold the units [b]As Is[/b] and had taken no steps to remove data from the HDD in a proper manner. The only solution here was that everyone who contacted this particular person had to be issued with a New E-Mail Address and the same applied to everyone else in that Address Book. So just remember something that may seem Innocent can carry a lot of useful data that you don't want to fall into the wrong hands.
Col
