Old PC for sale or scrap - how to remove drive/personal info safely?

GunJack

flippin'eck, a desktop with over 1GB RAM, probably running XP, if you treat it right and clean it up properly there'll be absolutely nothing wrong with it for net/office docs use at all !!!!

why do people always seem to want to get shut of perfectly good computers????

fwor

forgotmyname wrote: »

Except a specialist said you could shred a CD or disc platter into 1mm pieces and they could read the data on it.

Yeah, but you need an electron microscope to do it. How many identity thieves have access to one and the knowledge and time to get anything meaningful a bit at a time off a random bit of hard disk platter?

In truth, you don't even need DBAN to get rid of your data for good. As posted above, just using the HDD maker's utilities to write zeros to the whole disk is almost certainly good enough in the real world. Sure, it's possible to get data back from that with very specialist hardware, but again, no ordinary thief will have that.

googler

Why all the enthusiasm for breaking a perfectly good (apparently) drive?

OP; why not just take the HDD out of the computer and keep it? If you don't let it out of your house, the only way someone can get your data is if they break in.

Someone somewhere will buy a used computer without an HDD. I've sold them on eBay before.

debitcardmayhem

Why worry , Zero fill the drive, then 63 fill it then 127 fill it ,then 255 fill it,then 0129, then 65, etc, then write it with random data which is no use to anyone (e.g. the posts in this thread) then xor it with your favourite number between 0 and 255. Then if anyone really wants to recover anything from it you must be worth about £2M to make it worth their while, I personally would just forget about it, there is more likelihood that Miss World/Mr Universe will ring you up tonight and ask you for a date.(and offer to pay for it too using your banking details)

marms

Wipe the drive with DBAN then if you've got the original recovery discs use them to reinstall windows, it'll be as good as new and perfectly capable for internet or office use.
I'm sure there's a friend or relative that'd be happy to give it a good home.

wapow

A) Re-use it.
If its a small old drive, wipe it. Plenty of software out there.
C) It will be a tough task for the average joe to recover data once youve wiped it a few times.
D) Its not worth going through the time and effort for someones personal drive. Thief Recovery only occurs with company drives not disposed of properly.

E) A hammer to the drive is very very calming for the mind and soul. I once had an AMD Athlon PC and it gave me soooo many problems that after some years when i finally bought a new pc i took my Athlon PC to a car park with a few friends, one of them bought a sledge hammer and we all had a go smashing the f*****g thing to poeces.

Best feeling ever.

Type "Office Space" in youtube, theres a similar scene with a printer, baseball bat and work colleagues.

Z) Drill holes in it. Thats the best way as explained in the expert world.

poppellerant

Don't worry about the sticks of RAM - the instant you turn the PC off, the memory is lost from them.

Regarding the harddrive, I would use something like DBAN if you want to sell the machine with the harddrive in. Otherwise, just pull the harddrive out and do with it as you feel fit.

TakeThis

Personally, I would back up the Drivers with Driver backup or similar, use DBAN and then run a clean install.

Do you still have the Packard Bell recovery discs?

EycplUK

Always found that removing the hard drive and taking it on a cross channel ferry trip with a "HD overboard " half way across seemed to stop any mis-use of the info !
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

googler

wapow wrote: »

I once had an AMD Athlon PC and it gave me soooo many problems that after some years when i finally bought a new pc i took my Athlon PC to a car park with a few friends, one of them bought a sledge hammer and we all had a go smashing the f*****g thing to pieces.

....and a week or so later, left many poor unsuspecting motorists wondering why they had those unexplained punctures, with shards of metal etc. embedded in their tyres.....?

way to be socially responsible.