There’s a trick to thoroughly wiping all your data before you junk your old external solid state drive—or even computer.

Deleting a file on a computer rarely means it is gone. On traditional hard drives and many solid-state drives, what ...

What this means is that the deleted file is not fully gone and can still be recovered. It's only when the data is overwritten ...

Drag files to your computer’s trash, and they’re not really gone—most can be recovered with basic tools. Whether you’re wiping a single file or scrubbing an entire hard drive, the Data Shredder Stick ...

This article was taken from the October 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by ...