How do I wipe the drive absolutely clear before I throw an old computer away?

Question

I intend to throw an old computer away and because of the possibility of identity fraud etc. I want to be sure that the drive is absolutely clear before I do so. Is it good enough just to go into "Add/remove programs" and remove everything or is there a more thorough way of doing it.

Answer 1

Take a sledge hammer to it because even if you do wipe it clean there are programs out there can bring some of the data back.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

NO to add/remove; two things I would like to mention.
If the computer is still working I implore to donate it to a school or a charity that refurbishes them and give them to those who can't afford a system.

There are many Free programs on the net that will wipe your hard drive clean.

But if your determined to throw it away it takes only a couple of minutes to remove the hard drive and smash it with a hammer.........even if you decide to smash the hard drive donate the computer without the hard drive. It is still useful and if all that is needed is another hard drive the charities will put one in and give it someone who needs it.

Answer 4

Best way to ensure NOTHING is recoverable is to take it outside in the rain, open it up and smash everything inside with a hammer - specially when you're in a bad mood. Or let the kids do it (they'll destroy EVERYTHING). Then gather all the bits up and dispose of it lawfully by 'phoning the Council for a special uplift to deal with electronics disposal.

And it's better fun than taking a magnet to the hard-drive (which also works:)))

But don't bother deleting things manually - that's too much hassle and time consuming.

Answer 5

I recently have to do a whole bunch of PCs

http://www.killdisk.com/ have a free version and a professional version. Depending on how sensitive the data is you can either use the free one or the Pro version.

Hitting with a hammer or tossing in a fire will not work. They have proven this (The fire was hot enough to melt the disk case but they still recovered the data.)

What you have to ask yourself is how much trouble are people doing to be willing to go to get at the data on the disk.

Answer 6

For government classified hard disks (CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, TOP SECRET) they are destroyed by dismantling the drive and dropping the plate in an acid bath.

However, for your purposes dismantling the drive, it's only a few screws and physically damaging the plate will suffice as the expense of recovering the data would far outweigh any benefits from ID fraud.

Answer 7

You can use something like a speaker magnet on the disks (I would crack it open first), or you can just break open that hard drive and keep the disks from the drive. They make neat ornaments on the Christmas tree, and after enough scratches no one could recover the data anyway (I hate throwing out useful stuff, can ya tell?)

Answer 8

Re-format the hard drive - don't use the windows quick format you want the one thats in the BIOS area or the Windows standard format that came with your windows installation disk. Either one will re-initialise all sectors - and clear the disk. Alternatively a big hammer works quite well!

Answer 9

fdisk and formatting? nope, you can still get info back off it. for those that dont know, you can defrag and its still possible to get info back! perhaps not all of it, but you can get some.

taking it apart? to much hassle!

what you need is a shredder. you need to shred all your files.

shredder software will over-write all your sectors etc.

if it was me, i'd just take the old drive out, install it in the new machine and then use it as another drive (after reformatting it).

to do that, ask a guru or look on the web for instructions.

Answer 10

the standard way in industry is to take the hard drive out and smash it with a hammer that way you can guarantee that no one can check the disk for any thing and as you are throwing it away that is what i would advise you to do other ways would be a full reformat the harddrive and defragging it will overwrite data as well.