That one customer who asked me to 'just wipe the hard drive'

3 comments

3 Comments

Dude probably thinks a hard drive is like a whiteboard where you just hit the undo button. Like bro, "wipe" means scrubbing every sector with zeros or random data so nobody can pull up their tax returns with some free recovery software. Had a guy bring in a laptop once and got mad when I told him a simple format wouldn't cut it for his old banking info. Just hit the nuke button and call it a day, not that hard.

davis.olivia19d ago

Oh man, I've had that exact conversation like ten times. You gotta be real clear with them upfront - tell them "wipe" means overwriting the whole drive, not just deleting the files. I always tell people it's like shredding paper instead of just crumpling it up. If they push back, just say a quick format leaves most data intact and recovery software can grab it in minutes. Saves you the headache of them coming back mad later.

eva_moore19d ago

Wait, isn't that technically called "sanitizing" instead of wiping though? Like wiping just means clearing the drive but not necessarily overwriting it, right? I mean I get what you're saying but I think the real issue is people don't know the difference between a quick format and a full format.