Disposing of old pc

cherry76

Will a factory reset enough or do I need to use something like disc eraser?

dan958

If you want to be totally secure, take the hdd/ssd out, and either sell it without a drive, or put new one in (if you are just disposing of the PC, dont put in a new drive, obviously)

Or if you just want to be pretty much totally secure, run DBAN.

Frozen_up_north

A "factory reset" or refresh of the operating system will not securely delete your old data. There are data erasing programs, how securely they erase the data and whether they erase an SSD fully is a risk. The only certain way is to destroy the drive with a lump hammer. Organisations that deal with highly sensitive data arrange for their hard drives to be physically shredded.

If you are taking the computer to a council recycling place destroy the hard drive first, if donating it to a friend or relative "refresh" the installation and wipe the free space with Bleachbit or CCleaner. If donating to a charity or selling it on eBay be careful how you clean up the drive...

sal_III

Factory reset just reinstalls the OS, best case scenario it will format the drive first, which should clear your data for people using it normally, but not from someone determined to recover it. Worst case scenario it will keep all your user data intact for anyone to access. Definitely not the best way to dispose a PC.

The 2 main options are to use software like https://dban.org/ or for extra paranoid people take the drive out and drill some holes into it (after wiping it with a software).

As for the disposal afterwards, my preferred choice is local school or charity as long as it's in working condition. Even without the "disk" drive they can make use of it.

Carrot007

A single pass format has yet to be defeated by anyone. (a real one, use a proper tool most os's tools lie even for a full format).



But feel free to listen to the paranoid.


Of even more relevance is what is on it that you are so worried about. Probably nothing so.

poppellerant

I fill my old drives with random data before zero erasing them. If you don't want to sell the drive and just want to securely erase the data, a few good bashes with a hammer to smash or buckle the platters will also help make future data recovery fruitless.

leviathan

A 128Gb Kingston SSD is around £20
Personally I dont recycle hard drives to others tho I'll happily take them myself.
I store any unwanted drives up then let the kids crush them with the mechanic's hydraulic press I have in the garage - more for the fun of it than the paranoia, but it's cheaper than the electric cost to run DBAN too :P

donnajunkie

if you have a power drill just drill 2 or 3 holes through the area that has the disc.