What to do with an old PC

albertross_2

Dban will do the job.

Donnie

Serious paranoia. I just pass them on to the young uns.

rizla01

Very easy TwoScrews and two plugs) to remove and re-install HD in new machine.
It WILL serve a good purpose.

KEEP IT!

Little_John

Jdubb wrote: »

are u (LJ) saying open up the base unit and remove what looks like the CD holder, according to yr pic, and that's where the info is, the hard drive? Many tks.

I remove the hard drives yes, It isnt only myself that uses that PC, I am carefull not to store anything on there, but my dad is a cub leader, also works for Bolton Wanderers and Scumchester United, the chairman of the PTA in a school and works in the school also so there could be information that should not get in to other people's hands.

Am I being paranoid? maybe, if people want to gte info they will get it I just make it a little more difficult to get anything I may hold. There are people that buy hard drives in the hope to get important details off them. The guys that buy drives have a little more sophisticated recovery tools
DBAN is a good tool and will put of most recovery tools.

the drives are usually 1" high, and 3.5"ish wide, they have 10 screw holes in them 3 on each side, and 4 on the bottom. most pc's will use 2 of the holes on each side, some will use the 4 on the bottom. lazy PC builders will only put 2 screws on the easy accessible side and leave the other side.
there are also 2 cables, 1 IDE/sata or scsi and the other is the power connector.

Keeping old drives also come in useful you can use them for extra storeage as 2nd drives. I jsut have way to many drives in my PC's 5x250GB's a 120GB and 2 73GB scsi drives ohh and a couple of 250GB external drives.

jasmin10

Thanks Little John. I think I will take it apart and keep the old drive.

Paranoia- definitely I have already been a victim of Identity theft and it caused loads of problems. There was a program on tv a while back when people had given their PC's to chairty and they found them in some foreign county being used to get credit card info and the peoples details off from the ghost image.

It's not worth the hassle so I would rather scrap it and maybe salvage any parts and flog them on ebay.

neilwoods

There is a lot of paranoia about people taken all your details from your comp. Chances are slim it will happen. But saying thats, there is a chance.

And these programs that say they will use military grade wipe detsila that overwirte the data several or even hundred's of times, do work to stop the semi pro. But you can still info from the HD. Only true way to destroy the data is to de-guass the drive or destroy it. As peole wont have a de-gausser, then destroy it. They are cheap enough these days to buy a new one.

Also to OP question, depending on age of comp, you will more than likely get more money if you strip the PC down and sell it piece by piece.

Then offer what you have left on freecycle, (minus the hard drive of course0

Dont simply just throw the hd away, take a hammer to it, break it open, and if you can burn the round disks inside, if not cut them up.

fatnbald

try eraser it has a nuke disk option which overwrites any data with random data 35 times and is completely unrecoverable.

The good news it is it is completely free!!! http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Asus_Mobo

Forget anything else use http://dban.sourceforge.net/

superscaper

Asus_Mobo wrote: »

Forget anything else use http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Did you miss reading the very first response? :rolleyes:

Eyesparky

kingmonkey wrote: »

Are people really out to try and recover data from other peoples old crappy hard drives?

Yes. They can steal your identity from them which can be very lucrative. As an aside, how do you feel about a complete stranger having access to all your documents, diary, family photos etc.?

As I have said on these forums before, my uncle resorts to concentrated hydrochloric acid to dissolve the platters of the hard drive ... a tad over the top but highly effective . (Note: don't try this at home kids!). I am with 'Little John' and wipe and remove my disks before system disposal.