Wiping hard drive TOTALLY

bundly

I've just broken up my old pc for parts and a friend has asked if he can have the hard drive.

Thing is, it's full of personal information like photos and emails that I would never want him to see. He is a computer geek/engineer and if there is a way to retrieve he will know it.

I've erased everything, and then I used Glary Utilities to "shred" the files and "wipe" free space.

Is this enough? Or is there something else I should do to make sure he cannot retrieve my old files?

Bundly.

wongataa

If you really want to be sure use DBan.

bundly

Thanks I will look into that

Andy_L

wongataa wrote: »

If you really want to be sure use DBan.

Or say no & take a hammer & chisel to it

bundly

That is the safest way!

DBan isn't working for me. You have to burn it onto a CD and then boot from that, which is no good as it's not the hard drive on the pc that I want to wipe but my old one which is plugged in USB as an external drive!

londonpi

Most of the programmes I'm aware of need to be booted.

thescouselander

Andy_L wrote: »

Or say no & take a hammer & chisel to it

I agree, is it really worth the risk losing control of data which you value? Unless you're being paid hamsomly just destroy the drive.

bundly

thescouselander wrote: »

I agree, is it really worth the risk losing control of data which you value? Unless you're being paid hamsomly just destroy the drive.

It's a bit delicate because my kneejerk reaction when my friend asked for it was sure, you can have it. Only afterwards did I start worrying that he could retrieve my deleted files.

If I were to say to him now, oh you cannot have it, this may cause a rift. He will ask why and if I say the reason he might feel hurt at my being so secretive and wondering what I have to hide etc etc it's easier just to wipe the drive and give it to him, don't you think, rather than get into all those sorts of problems.

somersethillbilly

Assuming that the HDD is healthy, no bad sectors etc, then keep it and use for backups and/ or disk imaging yourself. (You can never have too many backups). It seems a shame to trash a good HDD with a hammer. You can simply tell your friend that you need it.

bundly

Good idea but not possible... the HD (written in WINXP) cannot be read by the new PC (WIN7). He knows this.

(Aside... I have three external drives, all created with XP and none of them can be read by the new PC.)

puk999

After a reformat, could you fill up the drive with new files? I would've thought this would mean any space previously flagged as deleted (but not actually deleted) would be rewritten with the new files.

TBH, I think what you've done already is probably enough.