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Just remove the HDD?
Heinz
Posts: 11,191 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
Over the years, I've had a desktop and a laptop fail on me and, before recycling them to enthusiasts via Freecycle, I have physically removed their hard drives in the belief that I am protecting all my data when I do so (I then connect an adaptor and use the old drive for external storage of photographs or whatever).
However, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps, just removal of the hard drive was not all I needed to do to ensure whatever of my personal data had been on the old computer had been removed.
Does anyone know?
However, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps, just removal of the hard drive was not all I needed to do to ensure whatever of my personal data had been on the old computer had been removed.
Does anyone know?
Time has moved on (much quicker than it used to - or so it seems at my age) and my previous advice on residential telephony has been or is now gradually being overtaken by changes in the retail market. Hence, I have now deleted links to my previous 'pearls of wisdom'. I sincerely hope they helped save some of you money.
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Comments
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Even after doing a full format data can quite easily be retrieved. To make sure you have to use a utility like Killdisk or Eraser.0
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hdd is the only permanent storage area,ram clears when its shut down , so removing the hdd is enough
you could use dban to nuke the HDD and stop any attempts at recoveryEx forum ambassador
Long term forum member0 -
It is theoretically possible to extract information from RAM but it requires specialist knowledge and equipment and generally speaking when the computer is switched on and starting to be used it will completely wipe the RAM. Anyway, not enough to worry about at all.
When I put my old computers on freecycle I tend to give the hard-drive as well, but wipe it with Eraser (again it CAN be recovered theoretically but no-one is going to bother).
Steve0 -
This what I do as well, you should be fine with this.:pB&SC No. 298
Life`s Tragedy is that we get OLD too soon
and WISE too late!0 -
Thanks Steve but I'm talking about catastrophic failure ('that' smell and whisps of smoke from the motherboard) - so doing anything with the HDD except physically removing it out of the question.It is theoretically possible to extract information from RAM but it requires specialist knowledge and equipment and generally speaking when the computer is switched on and starting to be used it will completely wipe the RAM. Anyway, not enough to worry about at all.
When I put my old computers on freecycle I tend to give the hard-drive as well, but wipe it with Eraser (again it CAN be recovered theoretically but no-one is going to bother).Time has moved on (much quicker than it used to - or so it seems at my age) and my previous advice on residential telephony has been or is now gradually being overtaken by changes in the retail market. Hence, I have now deleted links to my previous 'pearls of wisdom'. I sincerely hope they helped save some of you money.0
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