Recently I bought a used Iomega IX4-200D from eBay at a very good price.  There is always a bit of risk buying used electronics, but this had a seven day return policy, so I gave it a thorough once-over.  It seemed a little slow so I flashed it with the latest firmware, and everything checks out good. 

I imagine the it’s slowness was why the unit was returned.  But the previous owner just shipped the unit back, still with 12 gigs of his data on it.  It looks like he used it for his Architecture business; there were plans, clientele lists, invoices, family pictures, the whole nine yards on it.  People really, really need to be aware of stuff like this, especially when you have personal data of other people!!

When I disposed of drives at work, I had some old servers in a rack for various drive types.  I would load them up, boot from a DBAN CD, and walk off while they did their thing.  The drives were later tossed in a gondola for a trip to the metal chipper.  If your hardware is leaving your control, you owe it to yourself (and others) to at least attempt to remove the data.  You just don’t know where  it is going to wind up.