if someone came across just my old harddrive could they find out whose computer it was from if no files?

Question

referencing my name were saved on it? Could they find out through my e-mail log in somehow?

Answer 1

Basically, it depends on how much your info is worth to someone else. In certain cases, involving criminal activity, information has been retrieved from smashed drives. Unless you are an accountant for organised crime, or someone that might be of interest to the DHS or CIA, the basic secure erase program will do. For 99 percent of the people, simply reformatting the drive is enough

Answer 2

Unless you reformatted the entire drive with junk data, EVERY BITE, then yes they can.

http://www.ontrack.com/

I recently had a friend reinstall and format a hard drive on my laptop, which I did not want them to do. I hooked the drive up to my PC, went to the above website and used their free disk search tool. I could verify that all the data that was "gone" was still there and could be recovered.

I purchased the program for $200 and recovered EVERYTHING of the disk. Unless you complete rewrite every inch of the disk then the data stays there. When you delete data it unlinks it from being viewable on the drive, it still exists on the disk.

Be VERY VERY careful tossing out old Hard Drives.

Answer 3

Probably if you left some sort of name on there if you never reformatted it before you lost it. More than likely just a name. If they access the internet, then maybe---- your email, depending on what you use. Some you would not have to sign in is why I say that.

Answer 4

Unless there is physical damage...then yes. I have used wiping programs on HDD's that I have gotten rid of and then I subject them to a 20oz magnet for about an hour. :) That cleans them up pretty good.

Answer 5

Unless the hard drive was physically destroyed, anything you ever put on it can be found.