Cleaning up a PC before Disposing of it

Rockman

Hi

I am in the process of buying a new pc and am enquiring as to how I go about clearing all the data etc from my old pc before disposing of it. I assume I have to set it to its original setting. But will that remove everything?

One I have cleared it does anyone know if there is any charity etc who could make use of it. Seems a waste to throw it in the skip.

Any help greatly appreciated.

grumbler

>> 100% Deleting on PC?

slink85

remove hard drive, keep it for use as an external hard drive / second hard drive and dispose of the rest

henm2

No need to destroy your hard drive. Just use the free DBAN booted off a usb flash drive or off an iso image on a cd. http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/

LazyD

Yes as henm2 says, DBAN is what you need to get rid of all data. Secure data erasal from hard drives is determined by the amount of times new data is written over the old data. The default setting in DBAN generally will do what you need (although if you are extra paranoid, and/or the data is sensitive and has legal ramifications, you should read about DBAN and how it works, it will still do the job for you but you might have to choose a more robust deletion method and wait much longer).

As others have said, your HD is probably not worth 'recycling' as a HD (maybe as scrap), in which case just put a few drill holes through it.

Also in regards to donating your PC to some needy people somewhere in the world, again this is ususally not worth doing for any parties involved. Some large corporations, medium sized businesses and municipal government have contracts with companies that seek to do this, however the nature of recycling IT equipment requires man hours and it's often not worth it as new much chepaer much more powerful equipment is always on the market. Your stuff will probably end up getting stripped for the usable metals in China or end up in landfill.

stator

I would use DBAN on it and then donate it to a local charity who recycle PCs. There is one near me. They take in unwanted computers and then sell them cheap to poor people.

prowla

You can use DBAN, or remove the disk and keep it.

Rather than pass the computer to and organisation to sell on, you could give it away via freecycle/freegle, and someone will be grateful to come to your house and take it off your hands.

googler

All data is on the HDD (Hard Disk Drive)

Remove it and keep it. You can use it as a backup, a secondary, etc. It's the most secure way, and it's the quickest and easiest. There are guides all over the web on how to do it

Charities will still thank you for the rest of the thing, they'll just install an HDD and OS for themselves.

Rockman

slink85 wrote: »

remove hard drive, keep it for use as an external hard drive / second hard drive and dispose of the rest

Is it easy to remove the hard drive? Not sure how to do it.

grumbler

Remove the (side) panel of your PC and you'll see.
As simple as that.

stator

prowla wrote: »

You can use DBAN, or remove the disk and keep it.

Rather than pass the computer to and organisation to sell on, you could give it away via freecycle/freegle, and someone will be grateful to come to your house and take it off your hands.

It'll most likely be someone who buys second hand computers and refurbishes them to sell on that takes it.