hobby computer for an upgrade. How do I wipe hard drive to not leave tracks for the new owner? An and all ideas will be helpful.

It's very easy to erase all data from your hard drive. Free hard disk erasers are available from many sites. Here is one of the best from www.cnet.com:

http://www.download.com/3000-2092-10188745.html

It's free and is does the job. But remember, if the CIA wants to get info off your hard disk, it can. Nothing is ever totally erased. However, if you are going to sell or give your PC to someone not with the CIA, the above hard disk eraser will work just fine.

Is swiping high powered magnets across your computer. No info can be recovered, but it also trashes the operating system so you will have to reconfigure everything.

Do you still have your Operating System CD-ROMs?

And for those worried about getting busted (mainly providers), place high powered magnetic strips around the doorway of your home office (or wherever you leave your computer), so if and when LE tries to take the hard drive out of your house, they will wipe the drive clean by default... Evidence go bye-bye

Kisses,
Vanica

If you're an electrician, like me, find the chip on the motherboard with the little fan on it, and blast it with some 480. Stand back when you hit the switch, as the top will blow right off. Lets see em try to get anything out of that one!! Even if you get the wrong chip, with that kind of abuse, not much else will survive either!

Remove the hard drive, put it on a large rock and pound the snot out of it with a large hammer until it's unrecognizable. The platers inside must be bent and damaged, not just the electronic board on the outside of the casting.

If you feel like being more delicate, take the drive apart and pound the individual disks into funny shapes.

I used to have a data recovery business. Trust me, this is the best way to go about it. If the computer is worthy of a new owner, buy a cheap replacement drive for it.


b

Drop it into a vat of molten steel.

It won't be back.

The computer is probaly worth dirt now. Destroy the harddrive and all the memory. The two posters that mentioned magnets and a good, big hammer were right, IMO. You will not get enough for the computer at trade in to make up for the grief that it can cause you while in the hands of others.

I have recovered files (for LE) from a HD when the owner had used big heavy powerful magnets, for military RADAR, directly on the drive. Fortunately, it did not work: The perv was into kiddy porn.

The memory is harmless, it's empty as soon as you turn off power.

The hard drive stores the data - pound it into unrecognizable slag.


b

Thanks for correcting me. I have an old computer that has adult escort information on it. I will follow your advice.

Step One: Put PC in car.  Step Two: Drive to nearest large body of water.  Step Three: Transfer PC from car to boat.  Step Four: Pilot boat 25 nautical miles offshore.  Step Five: Throw PC overboard.  Smokey the Sailor Man

Reformat the hard drive at least three to five times.  Simply install the Operating system that you have a few times, it makes it harder to retrieve anything even for professionals after three, If anybody wants to see your old info it costs alot.  If its windows just put the cd in and turn off then on and delete the partitions.

Go through the platters with a powerful magnet.  

Unless you have Osama's phone number on there, it's perhaps not necessary to melt them down too.

Definitely, don't trade them in.

An easy way to take care of the situation is to take out the HDD and use it as a slave in the new computer, or get an external enclosure for it and use it for back-up purposes.

Then buy a relatively cheap drive to put in the old computer.  

This way you keep the drive and no worries about anyone getting anything off of it.

Though, I think the first reply suggesting a free "shredder" is probably more than enough to keep most from getting anything off you HDD.

Been using this for years...

wanting not to destroy computer is out of kindness. The local school in my area is asking for old computers to be donated. For odvious reasons I want to make sure it's clean. I'm sure the younger students know way more than I will ever know about stored data and how to look for it. I want to protect myself within reason but also help out where I can. Hope this sheds some light on my delema. P.S. thanks for your useful suggestions so far.

Awwwwww B.S! to most of this speculation. THis is the sure way to erase. Buy Symantes's SystemWorks. REcover and back-up all that you want to keep, including the OS. Digitally erase the HD 3 times with random stuffing or 1's & 0's!!! (DOD Level!)  Erase it again and reload what you want. You are golden. Check with Symantec for exact instructions.

Each new computer I get instantly gets my old harddrive (reformatted) as a D: drive.

If you're talking laptop, I'm with the other guys: destroy it.

Just read your other post. If your computer is more than 2 years old, it's JUNK. If you donate to a school, they'll also think it's junk and a) throw it away or b) sell it (and all the other donated computers) to a recycler. You're putting yourself in a potentially awkward position by trying to make a gesture for sake of making a gesture (though in truth what you'd be doing, regardless of how well-intentioned, is donating your garbage).

-- Modified on 7/4/2006 8:54:31 PM

As someone noted above, the software will do a good job of erasing the data in a way that most people can't get to it, but with the proper equipment it can still be recovered.  See attached article.

I know that I tire of keeping my Costco membership just so I can buy discount computers so they will run the upgrades of microsoft's latest "stuff"!  To say nothing of the constant everchanging web needs for increased computational abilities?!  Perhaps if we were to offer "our" services to the Gates Foundation along the lines of Warren Buffett...  we could then influence Bill!  (or in your case, Melinda!)

LOL - Just a thought!

But I too agree, junk it as schools tend to only want the latest computer, and the drives can be read...  Driving a truck over the hard drive, and then pouring vinegar on the remains, and letting it sit in the vinegar for a couple of days will help.... but I am not totally sure of that...

Here is some real info, coming from a guy who does this for a living. You need to zero write your drive.  What this means is you write a binary 0 to every sector of your hardrive.  Use a program like http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

You burn the CD and then reboot your machine with the CD in it. Depending on how big your hard drive is, this can take over 2 hours.  If you do it 3 times, you are within the same standard that is used to destroy Top Secret or Specat data by the military.  That should make you safe from local LE.

If you are concerned about files you delete on your PC on a daily basis from getting recovered the invest in PGP Enterprise Edition, it includes one of the best "White space" zero writers. Any one can PM if they have questions.

I think smokey the sailor had the best idea.