Are you getting rid of your hard drive but want to make sure your data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? Just deleting the files or formatting won’t work, the drive needs to be wiped. Many people believe that you need to do the DoD standard of a seven pass wipe, but research shows my long-held belief that once is enough.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf
http://www.honline.com/security/news/item/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it-739699.html
It’s also important for forensic investigators to be aware that SSD drives can make file recovery almost impossible due to the way they operate.