Image forming apparatus and method for erasing data thereof

A method of erasing data in an image forming apparatus comprising:

• specifying equal-size blocks so that a hard disk memory is divided into equal-size blocks to be overwritten with overwrite data;
• specifying the value of the overwrite data whose size is smaller than that of the equal-size block;
• detecting the top of each page of image data stored in an image data storage area;
• and
• overwriting the specified equal-sized blocks of the image data storage area of the hard disk, starting from the detected top of each page of the image data, with the specified value of the overwrite data on a block-by-block basis.

A method of erasing data in an image forming apparatus comprising:

• specifying equal-size blocks so that a hard disk memory is divided into equal-size blocks to be overwritten with overwrite data;
• specifying the value of the overwrite data whose size is smaller than that of the equal-size block;
• detecting completion of processing of a print job;
• determining whether or not image data of the print job should be stored when completion of the processing of the print job has been detected;
• overwriting the specified equal-size blocks of an area of the hard disk with the specified value of the overwrite data on a block-by-block basis if it is determined that the image data of the print job need not be stored, wherein the area contains data of each page of the image data;
• and
• erasing management information on the image data.