cleaning up or wipe hard drive before selling

david69_2

Are there any free programmes out there to clean up or wipe my hard drive I'm buying a laptop so do need the desktop anymore

The_Grandmaster

There are but their effects can be undone.

I would suggest that you take out the harddrive from the desktop out and put it in a caddy. Then you would have an external harddrive and protect the information on it!

darich

Why not remove the hard drive and put it in a caddy and continue to use it?
Desktop is unlikely to be worth much if you're selling at although something is always better than nothing so if you're selling it, the above idea is no use.
Alternatively, buy a cheap hard drive and swap them over.
if you're disposing of the pc and want to be sure no one else gets your data you could smash it with a hammer.

there may be programs that completely remove/delete a hard drive's contents but I'm not sure if they'll be free or any good.

penrhyn

Either the keep solution as above, or remove the drive and smash it with a hammer.

bryanb

[QUOTE remove the drive and smash it with a hammer.[/QUOTE]


This method is very cheap and guaranteed 100% effective!

Donnie

Darik's Boot And Nuke if you are going to sell it on and you have a disc so that you can reinstall the OS.
The Caddy idea is a good one, but you need to find out if the HDD is IDE or SATA before purchasing the caddy.

ehlo

The_Grandmaster wrote: »

There are but their effects can be undone.

The effects can only be undone if the overwrite is not done fully. There are many HD wipe programs that have been DoD certified

Donnie wrote: »

Darik's Boot And Nuke if you are going to sell it on and you have a disc so that you can reinstall the OS.
The Caddy idea is a good one, but you need to find out if the HDD is IDE or SATA before purchasing the caddy.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (or DBAN) is what I would recommend too!
I had to remove the link from the quote, as I'm still a newbie here!

tronator

Donnie wrote: »

Darik's Boot And Nuke if you are going to sell it on and you have a disc so that you can reinstall the OS.
The Caddy idea is a good one, but you need to find out if the HDD is IDE or SATA before purchasing the caddy.

This is the first sensible reply in this thread. Depending on the level of erasing (3, 7 or even 35 times) it's next to impossible to recover anything. Don't just reinstall Windows as large parts will still contain unerased data. You might not see them in Windows, but the data is still there.

googler

tronator wrote: »

This is the first sensible reply in this thread.

Really?

I thought all the suggestions to remove the HDD from the machine were eminently sensible, and I'd suggest the same.

Remove HDD, possibly replace it with a blank one, and either sell the machine with no OS, or load an OS onto the new HDD.

Keep the old HDD to keep your data secure.

tronator

googler wrote: »

Really?

I thought all the suggestions to remove the HDD from the machine were eminently sensible, and I'd suggest the same.

Remove HDD, possibly replace it with a blank one, and either sell the machine with no OS, or load an OS onto the new HDD.

Keep the old HDD to keep your data secure.

Firstly you shouldn't take it too seriously. There was a smiley in my post.

Secondly the OP already made up his mind and wanted to sell his old desktop. No need to tell him to keep the hard disk. There are methods to securely wipe it, even certified by the DoD. If you're paranoid you can even use the Gutmann algorythm to overwrite all date 35 times.

darich

tronator wrote: »

Firstly you shouldn't take it too seriously. There was a smiley in my post.

Secondly the OP already made up his mind and wanted to sell his old desktop. No need to tell him to keep the hard disk. There are methods to securely wipe it, even certified by the DoD. If you're paranoid you can even use the Gutmann algorythm to overwrite all date 35 times.

There was a full stop after your comment about it being the only sensible reply. The smiley came after making - so I didn't immediately connect the two either.

Can you point out where the OP stated that decision had been made to sell the desktop???