That sucks sarah, sorry to hear. Sounds like you have a good handle on things though, but for what it's worth I want to mention something concerning your hard drive (and this goes for all others who keep sensitive and/or damning info on hard drives)

Formatting isn't the "total erasing" act that most people consider it. If you're going to go through the trouble to doing a re-install for security's sake, use the proper tool: this comes in the form of proper formatting utility that most hard drive manufacturers offer for free on their websites. Sometimes these utilities are referred to as "0 cell writers" - basically what happens is the utility writes a zero to every single steeenkin sector on that drive. Nothing survives. Far better than the format exe supplied with Windows, which only erases the first and last 1million bytes of info, and doesn't even touch the boot sector of the disc.

Having worked in the industry for awhile, I can tell you it isn't hard at all to recover things that were simply deleted, or formatted in the normal sense of the word.


I keep my grow info on a tiny thumb drive that is small enough to flush or toss in the microwave (on the 'popcorn' setting of course! hahahahahaha).
That's the way to go, with a pen drive! :thumbsup: I've found them to be surprisingly resistant to water and ESD. I'd spare your house the smell of throwing one in the kitchen reactor though - surely stinky owns a hammer?

Death by microwave is still the best way to destroy info on CDs or DVDs, and it only takes 2-3 seconds. Looks cool too.