Overwriting can remove data for the people who haven't got access to forensic equipment to find data. Degaussing the hard drive ensures that all data is permanently and irretrievably erased.
for a 15 year old drive that may hold true. For any drive with perpendicular technology, its impossible to recover using current technology. There is a article out from the guy who suggested using a tunneling electron microscope on the older technology drives explaining why its no longer viable.
If you are that worried about your data you should be encrypting the hard drive anyway (definately if you are using a laptop). Disk wipe an encrypted drive and there is no way of doing a recovery on any drive.
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for a 15 year old drive that may hold true. For any drive with perpendicular technology, its impossible to recover using current technology. There is a article out from the guy who suggested using a tunneling electron microscope on the older technology drives explaining why its no longer viable.
If you are that worried about your data you should be encrypting the hard drive anyway (definately if you are using a laptop). Disk wipe an encrypted drive and there is no way of doing a recovery on any drive.