Best way to securely wipe an old PC?

Geodark

googler wrote: »

Best way to secure data is to keep it.

Agree with the above, take the HDD out and either use it with a new PC or keep it at the bottom of your sock drawer.

Must have half a dozen or more old hard drives at home from doing this - Must be a better approach :rotfl:

googler

Geodark wrote: »

Must have half a dozen or more old hard drives at home from doing this - Must be a better approach :rotfl:

A bigger sock drawer.

macman

KxMx wrote: »

Personally I would take the hard drive out (it's dead easy) and sell the PC without.

Except that a ten year old desktop PC running XP has little enough value to start with. Remove the hard drive and operating system, and it's only really useful for spares.
Whereas with a clean install it will be perfectly secure and still of use as a working machine.

JimmyTheWig

macman wrote: »

Except that a ten year old desktop PC running XP has little enough value to start with. Remove the hard drive and operating system, and it's only really useful for spares.
Whereas with a clean install it will be perfectly secure and still of use as a working machine.

Would the cost of securely clearing the hard disk not be more than the value of the whole thing once cleared, though?
I'd say keep or destroy the hard disk and freecycle the rest.

NiftyDigits

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Would the cost of securely clearing the hard disk not be more than the value of the whole thing once cleared, though?
I'd say keep or destroy the hard disk and freecycle the rest.

What cost??

JimmyTheWig

NiftyDigits wrote: »

What cost??

Do you not need commercial software to securely clear a hard disk?

NiftyDigits

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Do you not need commercial software to securely clear a hard disk?

No, you do not.

S0litaire

2 options (well 3)

1) grab a copy of XP from somewhere (not mentioning any coastal feature like a BAY that might hold pirates or anything!) ^_~ stick in DBAN wipe the drive then reinstall XP from the disk using the CD-Key on the side of the machine.

2) use the Rescue disk to reinstall the XP to factory conditions. Recovery usually wipes the partition XP was installed on and recreates it and loads in a fresh copy. You can use any number of free disk space cleaning software to wipe the remaining free space on the drive.
SDelete from the guys at Microsoft SysInternals site will do the job

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897443


Optional option 3)

Stick any form of Linux (Mint might be best for the old Dell) on it and play about with that for a while before deciding if it's worth reselling it! you never know you might find a use for it as a small file/media server Or to back up your other machines ^_^