Embarrassing Predicament !!

I am the owner of a macbook pro that has been passed around a "fraternity house" environment for several years so you can imagine the material that must be on the drive... nothing illegal, just embarrassing I'm sure!! While upgrading the software I encountered a problem & had to erase the hard drive & reinstall the original tiger software. Still having problems & after several phone calls to apple support they have suggested I go to the apple store with the computer. My question is (cause I'm not very knowledgeable about computers) since I erased the drive when reinstalling Tiger, will the pros at the apple store still be able to access the content of what was on the drive previously (as I'm sure they will run a hard drive diagnostic)?? I'm going either way I just want to be prepared for the embarrassment if I cant avoid it!! THANKS:Blushing:

I don' t know if it's even possible, but if it is, they'd have to try real hard. Why would they want to?

When you do a regular erase of a drive the computer does not actually erase the information on the drive. It generally erases the directory information for the existing files and marks the space as available for use. As new information is written to the drive the old information is replaced by the new.

Although it is sometimes possible to recover information (assuming there hasn't been too much new information written) the process can be time consuming and usually requires running some type of data recovery software. While it could be done with the right software I doubt they would waste that much time. This can be a very time consuming process. Eons ago I spent the better part of three days recovering information from one data cartridge.