After putting all my years of information from my old computer to new one, My new Dell computer hard drive took a dump after 30 days. Dell wants to send a third party repair person to my house and put new hard drive in and take the old one. I have everything I've ever filed in a file cabinet scanned to my hard drive. Everything. I told them I want to keep the bad hard drive to destroy myself and they said I can't keep it. What should I do. Even wiping the drive people can recover info. Any suggestions? Thanks!
2006-11-18 07:54:41 · 6 answers · asked by good_enuff2 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Other - Computers
If the drive runs to the point where you can do things to it, then I'd suggest backing it up and then use a secure delete utility to wipe it clean. If you had a Mac this would be built in, but either way these things can overwrite every bit of the HD with zeros - and there's almost no way to recover data from it. Maybe the NSA could if they wanted to reconstruct the last magnetic write to your drive, but I don't think they'll do anything more than examine it to determine why it failed and then throw it away.
Of course if your drive doesn't work and you can't do this then you should express to Dell that you need to recover the data off the drive before handing it over and then that you don't mind giving it to them, but you want to destroy it first because of the data on it. It's really something you need to work out with them and they should understand.
2006-11-18 07:59:44 · answer #1 · answered by GrayTheory 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
First of all, destroying the hard drives doesn't mean you have to destroy the entire computer. I think you are confusing the word "hard drive" for that big box you plug your monitor and mouse into. That's not the hard drive, that's the computer. The hard drive is a device inside the computer which stores data. You can destroy it without destroying the rest of the machine. That being said, yes, you can erase all the information off of it without actually destroying it if you want to. There is plenty of tools available for free on the internet, just go to Yahoo and type in "free hard drive erasing software". You can also physically destroy the drive. Remove it from the computer, and destroy it as you see fit (personally I like blowing them up, but thats just me) Just however you decide to destroy it, make sure the metal platters inside are destroyed, or at least de-magnetized.
2016-05-22 01:20:47 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
We wiped out the hard drive of our old computer, then replaced the write-over space with favorite music. The write-over space is the area your information occupied, that is still recoverable. Then we cut and pasted over and over, re-writing the emptied space each time the c&p grew.
2006-11-18 08:09:40 · answer #3 · answered by Em E 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You delete all data in the drive.! I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems. Some RAM/ hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful
2006-11-19 12:49:43 · answer #4 · answered by RAS 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
do you still have your old drive, with all the info? As i understand it, we are talking about two drives?
2006-11-18 07:57:35 · answer #5 · answered by joelius24 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I would wipe it first, definitely.
2006-11-18 07:56:00 · answer #6 · answered by bogus_dude 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋