How to wipe desktop hard drive before disposal

pineapple

Hello
I am going to donate or give away my Windows XP desktop and want to make sure all personal info is wiped. What is the best way of doing this? Cheers.

pramsay13

a hammer :T

agrinnall

If you wipe your hard drive then it won't be an XP machine any more. Honestly it's really worth nothing, I would do as the previous poster suggests (possibly comically, but I'm saying it for real) and remove the hard drive, physically destroy it, and take the rest of the system to the tip.

tronator

Why is there always the "hammer brigade" coming out first?


Download DBAN, create a bootable cd or usb stick and wipe your hard disk with it.

Neil_Jones

tronator wrote: »

Why is there always the "hammer brigade" coming out first?


Download DBAN, create a bootable cd or usb stick and wipe your hard disk with it.

DBan, like all software solutions is not 100% guaranteed if you want to remove all trace of anything on it. Only guaranteed solution as presented is to remove it and physically destroy it.

That being said, the likes of DBan will suffice for 95% of people.

debitcardmayhem

pineapple wrote: »

Hello
I am going to donate or give away my Windows XP desktop and want to make sure all personal info is wiped. What is the best way of doing this? Cheers.

When you say donate/give away do you want to do said with or without an XP system, you could of course wipe the disk as suggested above and then re-install XP , or you could install a linux system on it (after wiping) or just give it away without a hard disk. You don't say which PC make model it is and that may make a difference.

Ergates

Neil_Jones wrote: »

That being said, the likes of DBan will suffice for 95% of people.

More like 99.9% of people. And if you're one of the 0.1%, you'll know about it and won't be asking on an internet forum. So, basically, for 100% of people who ask, DBan is a fine solution.

System

Neil_Jones wrote: »

DBan, like all software solutions is not 100% guaranteed if you want to remove all trace of anything on it.

DBAN is good enough that the people who wrote it created Blancco which is a commercial product trusted so much that the government are happy for an IT auctioneers I used to buy from to use it to erase hard drives of laptops they're disposing of.

Uxb

At the other extreme other governemnt depts will take apart the hard drives themselves and sandblast the magnetic material off the actual discs platters.

Anthorn

pineapple wrote: »

Hello
I am going to donate or give away my Windows XP desktop and want to make sure all personal info is wiped. What is the best way of doing this? Cheers.

Windows XP is less than useless and it has to be at least Windows 7 these days. So nuke the HDD with Dban and install Linux. Go ahead and search eBay for an already configured Linux box. The chances are you won't find one and the reason could be that no-one wants one or they are in short supply.

Go for Linux Mint which is configured for multimedia and just about everything out of the box. Your biggest hassle will be downloading the iso and writing it to DVD - if you have a DVD rewriter that is.

interstellaflyer

Anthorn wrote: »

Windows XP is less than useless and it has to be at least Windows 7 these days.

Really? I have and old 2006 vintage Compaq Presario with Windows XP on it in my workshop and it works perfectly well for general admin, watching DVDs, listening to music etc, the only thing i don't do is use it for internet. I accept that XP is finished from a support point of view but there are people who just want a word processor.