How do you properly wipe clean an old hard drive?

The_Salad

Hi, we just purchased a new laptop replacing our old Windows XP PC. We would like to donate the PC to a charity but first want to ensure we wipe clean the hard drive. Can anyone recommend an effective way of doing so? Many thanks.

m5rcc

Use Active Kill Disk from Hiren's Boot CD

TakeThis

The_Salad wrote: »

Hi, we just purchased a new laptop replacing our old Windows XP PC. We would like to donate the PC to a charity but first want to ensure we wipe clean the hard drive. Can anyone recommend an effective way of doing so? Many thanks.

Make and model?
The easiest is just to run a destructive Factory Restore.
The one that will give you the most peace of mind is to remove the old HDD and replace it with a new HDD, keeping the old HDD in your possession(perhaps to be used as an external storage medium).

santer_2

Have you asked any charities if they will take a PC without a drive?

Some will wipe the drive for you, though get it in writing

Or there are a number of programmes like this

http://www.dban.org/about

You will need to download the ISO File then burn that as an image file to a CDR. Set the boot order to boot from the CD ROM Drive first, put the CD in while you are changing the boot order, and then restart the PC. Follow the prompt and then let it run, which will take a while depending on the size of the drive. As there is not too much of a hurry, you could run it once a day for a few days to make sure the data is very difficult to recover

ImgBurn is a programme you can use to burn the ISO File as an image file onto a CDR if you do not already have a programme for that

http://www.imgburn.com/

henm2

DBAN definitely seems to be the way to do it. Download the image file and this can be burnt as an ISO image file to CD or alternatively using YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator Windows (just google Pendrive linux Yumi for the link) you can put it on a USB pen drive and boot from that instead. It will obliterate all your data on the hard drive and will not be recoverable.

GunJack

however, charities would probably prefer to have an op sys installed so they can show it working (if they are going to sell it) as they'll get more for it If you wipe the drive, re-install the OS before you donate it.

jamespir

i think a hammer is agood idea cause you cant completely wipe a harddrive thats how glitter got into trouble

Dave_C_2

Look at this thread post number 16

I have this feeling of deja vu today

Dave

Bollotom

jamespir wrote: »

i think a hammer is agood idea cause you cant completely wipe a harddrive thats how glitter got into trouble

I think you'll find Glitter got into trouble because he had porno images of children on his computer. Dban will do it.

Ivalore

jamespir wrote: »

i think a hammer is agood idea cause you cant completely wipe a harddrive thats how glitter got into trouble

Spot on.

Take the HDD out and hammer it to pieces!

patman99

+1 for removing the drive and replacing it.