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PC hardware: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data?
- 11/14/08 3:00 PM
Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal da
by robertjc45 - 11/1/08 5:18 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Back up all data & then REFORMAT.
Zilla Data Nuker
by JonDeath - 11/1/08 5:46 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There is a free program titled Zilla Data Nuker.
The free version of this program allows for the wiping of data so it is completely unreadable and unrecoverable no matter what the means. It's of course available from CNET.
Install it, open the primary interface and select German Standard for the most thorough of hard drive wipes. Then select shred drive, choose the drive you'd like to shred and select shred the whole drive.
There is of course one huge drawback, it takes a looooong time to shred the entire drive. I had a 320 gig which sat for 3 days before finished which made the computer it was jacked into pretty much incapacitated for the duration of the shred. The good news is, the drive will be completely unrecoverable yet fully functional.
Erasing hard drives
by R Blueboy - 11/1/08 6:09 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Erase a HD, same as erasing floppies--use a big magnet and run around it. Will, like a floppie, have to be re-formataed to be used again.
Using Windows DELETE simply replaces the first character of the file name with a ? mark. Files are easily accessable.
Norton used to have an secure erase appliction, but it required the HD to be in the computer and TOOK A LOOOOOONNNNNNNG TIME!
DON'T USE MAGNETS
by darrenforster99 - 11/1/08 6:17 AM In reply to: Erasing hard drives by R BlueboyDON'T under any circumstances use a magnet near a hard drive, a hard drive is nothing like a floppy, there is a lot of microchips that the IDE controller uses that will just be totally wiped clean as well and the hard drive will turn into a brick. A floppy doesn't need all those microchips in it as they are in the drive itself not in the floppy disk, but a hard disk isn't just the disk, it's the drive as well.
Also just using a magnet on a hard disk wouldn't guarantee you've totally destroyed all the data anyway, as some drives can still work and still have most of the data on them even after being put next to a large magnet.
Wiping hard drives
by darrenforster99 - 11/1/08 6:13 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There are a number of utilities out there that can wipe the data on the hard drives. Formatting a hard drive is not enough to fully wipe all data, because hard drives are mechanical devices the head of the hard drive is slightly offset every time it hits a block on the disk so as formatting only writes once to that block it doesn't get rid of everything there and can be quite easily retrieved, even after 2 or 3 times some of the data still exists.
To remove all data from the hard drive you need to Purge the drive rather than format it. There are a number of utilities out there that will do it. In Norton Utilities there used to be a DOS program that would do this, it seems now there is a similar program called Norton WipeInfo in the Norton Systemworks Basic and Premier packs.
Alternatively there are free clones of this software such aa Heidi's Eraser
http://www.heidi.ie/node/6
or Darik's Boot and Nuke
http://www.dban.org/download
Probably if you have a number of hard drives to do Darik's would be best as you could download the CD version of the software, burn it to disc and leave it in the CD drive whilst you plugged the drives in and then just changed the discs, you wouldn't need to leave your original Windows hard disk plugged in which would keep that one safe, and give you more space to plug in all the hard drives you want to purge. The only thing with that is you might need to change the BIOS of the PC to tell it to boot from CD as the first device.
DONATING HARD DRIVES
by headfella - 11/1/08 6:28 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Kathy C.,
Firstly, I wouldn't recommend this practice but if you donate your old drive(s) you shud:
- boot from your original system install DVDs/CDs and wipe the drive(s). Make sure you've copied any and all of your data.
- turn off the computer when done. Remove the wiped drive, install the exteranal drive(s) if possible. If it's an ext with a USB connection, hook it up and repeat the wipe using the original system discs.
Make sure you've set aside a day of your time for this procedure. Do it while doing laundry or other household chores.
Donating hard disk
by subhash_yadav9 - 11/1/08 7:43 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
DO a master boot record format(MBR),it will lead to erase of data.
HDD Secure Erase
by mortpasco - 11/1/08 7:49 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Look for a free download of a program called CMRR HDD Secure Erase.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
What is secure erase?
Secure erase is a means of erasing all data on a disk drive so the original user can be certain that it cannot be recovered, including data on reallocated blocks on the drive.
It’s electronic data shredding, and allows a user to safely sell or donate an old drive.
use a shredder app
by khchstein - 11/1/08 8:06 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My english is very poor but i'll do my best to give you a clear response.
One way of getting rid of all the information stored on hard drives is of course to format them. Nevertheless some of the data may still be read with powerful recovery applications.
Another is to download and install a shredder application that thoroughly deletes data. In order to do so, my advice is to download "Tune Up" - it's a software full of good stuff to help you manage your system. During the installation check "Show TuneUp Shredder in the context menu of all files". At the end of the installation, right-click on any folder/file and select TuneUp Shredder in the context menu. A window will open and you'll be then able to select three different methods to delete your personal information (don't forget to check "delete allocated space"). But be careful ; the more repetitions you want the more time it will take to delete the files (but it prevents recovery 
)
Hope this is helpful... 
Darik's Boot and Nuke
by slappie - 11/1/08 8:36 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
download this ISO file from http://www.dban.org/ and burn a boot cd with it. For all the harddrives that are in computers, boot this cd and follow the instructions. After the wiping process is started the cd can be removed and you can move to the next pc.
For the harddrives that are not in a computer, I suggest a usb to sata/pata connector which are about $20 and are very handy to have. Like an external drive case without the case and with connectors for laptop sized drives as well as sata/pata desktop sized drives. I personally have this one: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0262984
Once the drive is connected to a pc, boot to the cd and follow the same instructions. To speed things up with a pile of drives, you can connect multiple drives to one computer and nuke them all at once.
If the drives cannot be seen by the OS because of a hardware failure in the drive, I suggest getting a star/torx bit/screwdriver (I think most drives are size 6 or 8). Remove the platters, rub them with a strong magnet, scratch them, bend them, whatever.
Erasing Hard drives
by Chester Pray - 11/1/08 10:33 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If the drive is still operational in your computer (or can be reinstalled), get the Eraser program at << http://www.heidi.ie/node/6 >> or look for it using a search engine (Yahoo , Google etc.) This will provide a number of methods to erase data usually taking a relatively long time to do it. Re-formatting the drive will make it difficult to get to the DATA
Absolute - Complete Disk erasure!
by dminott - 11/1/08 10:45 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Here is the MOST secure way to erase those hard drives!
Be VERY careful that you do NOT do this to your GOOD drive(s)!!!
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDErase.zip
Dave
Hard drives
by Lennox Borel - 11/1/08 11:51 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
No, I would also like the answer to this question.
Answer to hard drive disposal
by karlparrick - 11/1/08 12:24 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Take a big hammer and smash the hick out of it...kill it. They burn it in a big hot fire and then bury it in a glass jar filled with itching acid in the jar.
Wiping personal data
by fondy - 11/1/08 1:53 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
As I understand it, formatting a hard drive won't completely remove the data. You have to essentially overwrite the existing data with new data. The most cost-effective way to do that would be to format the drive, completely refill it with non-sensitive data, then do another format.
Probably the simplest way to do this would be to buy a cheap external hard drive enclosure for connecting the drive to your PC long enough to overwrite the data. I would even remove the drives that are still installed in the computers and erase them this way as well.
If you run into any unexpected problems, Windows XP has a Disk Management utility in the Control Panel under Computer Management.
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