What you do is up to you, and how worried you are about your data.
If I purchase second-hand equipment (
almost everything I use is 2nd hand), or salvage some from unknown sources, I usually 'practice' my 'data salvage' techniques by exploring what was on the drive. Note: I never keep that data, just get to a point where I've seen some actual recovered data that I can then tick off as 'success' & then re-format it (with write over all sectors). If I erase my own data in error (
again!), I want to know I have a recovery option if I need it, and an
unknown drive adds some
mystery to it as I don't know what I'll discover the machine was used for.
When most people recycle; they only 'format' the drives, where the fast format only creates a new partition table & doesn't erase any data; thus recovery of data is very possible (
just requires time). Overwriting of data is thus essential if you value your data & want it erased.
I've worked (
voluntary) at a recycler (ComputerBank Victoria AU) which provides computers with GNU/linux; and before they re-use a drive that was donated to them, they run
dban across the drive before we actually
cloned an OS we'd provide with the system to that drive. So that maybe an option 'just to be sure'. You could just re-install an OS after the
dban write.
Note: I've only used dban to erase magnetic drives; have never downloaded it (
we had a machine setup to erase six drives at once that ran it) but I believe it's this -
https://dban.org/