PC hardware: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data?
- 11/14/08 3:00 PM
To clear a hard drive
by edsearch2000 - 11/1/08 2:31 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you have access to an electro-magnet run the hard drives by it. I haven't tried it with regular magnets, but I would leave the magnet on it for an hour or so. The next person can set it up to use or you can reinstall the app.
the only sure way
by treenaj - 11/1/08 3:00 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I know people who's job is to try to get information off of hard drives & the only sure way to make sure they can't is to physically destroy it.
wiping drives
by Driller005 - 11/1/08 4:09 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi, go to roadkil.net download his drive utilities and he has a program that will totally wipe the drives. wipe the first that you have in your machine (note make sure it is the slave and not the primary). When done replace with the next drive that you want to wipe once again make sure you set it as the slave. repeat as required. The utilities are free. just make sure you want to wipe it as once done there is no going back.
driller.
Clearing memory in a hard drive
by Paul Plasters - 11/1/08 5:56 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Write zeros to all fill sectors,That should do it. (well you could use any number, if you preferred another number.
Securely donating a hard drive
by Alain Martel1 - 11/1/08 7:22 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first thing to evaluate, is how cencitive the data is.
Are there family and vacation photos and old e-mails, plus some media files like music and videos, or does it include acount names and numbers and passwords?
If it's just some old documents with no cencitive information, a simple reformat or repartitionning will probably be enough.
You may want to suppress some files, create some "garbage" files, defragment the drive, format, repartition, reformat. This will keep almost every snooper off your data. This mean that the casual snooper will have no idea that the data where even there at any time.
If you are paranoyd, or have very cencitive data, like some tax reports, SIN, certificats and such that can be used to do an identity theft, then you need to do more. Start by erasing ALL cencitive files, empty the recycle bin end any temp files and folders, defrag, then load the drive with tons of files, like many web pages, some music and other media, delete some, change some other, create some to replace those deleted. When doing this, defragment a few times. Then, do as in the previous paragraph. You may want to do it one or two times. This will shuffle the data around, and overwrite it with some other, useless and worthless data.
Now, you need some forensic tools to retreive any of the original data. You'd need to be VERY motivated AND have access to some very specialised tools to do it. It may be more trouble and cost to access the data than what they are worth.
You can use some tools, like CCleaner and some options from antivirus and anti-spywares application to "burn" the data by overwritting it with more or less random data, over several passes. Take a look at the options offered by what you have now.
Anyway, there is no way that you can make the old personal data 100% unretreivable, short of MELTING the drive, but you can easily make that extremely hard, and make it cost WAY more than it's potential worth.
Here's how, now and then Cleanup
by WornHall - 11/1/08 8:32 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Locate a free or proprietary "disk swiping" program. Be sure that it is compliant with FIPS *(Federal Information Processing Standards) rules as this will guarantee or at least indicate that the program will do a good job if all instructions are followed. In the old days we used to write huge files of binary zeroes sufficient to fill the drive, then with smaller and smaller files at the end of the drive area. It was easy to do, and many of us had proc (script)files to do this task.
A swiping program writes low-values (binary zeroes) and/or random data over the entire surface of a drive. It does so the number of times which you specify to achieve. Each few passes make the drive more and more impossible to recover. A rookie cannot retrieve anything after the first pass, a pro, about seven passes, and a forensics expert, up to 14 passes.
Back in 65' ya see..........
Warren Hall
Giving an old laptop to Grandson
by chelseamorning - 11/15/08 2:19 PM In reply to: Here's how, now and then Cleanup by WornHallWow, I just want to give my old laptop to my 11-year-old grandson. This is all rather overwhelming. If he's anything like my 21-year-old son techie, he could see everything done on it in the last two years. I have nothing to hide but some rude PM's from men. **Shaking my head**
chelsea
Write over the hard drive several times
by Vicki B - 11/1/08 9:42 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In order to securely wipe a hard drive you need to write over the existing information. Just deleting files and emptying the recycle bin leaves files accessible to someone with a little bit of knowhow, even if you can't see them. Even reformatting your drive doesn't make it impossible to recover files.
I'm sure there are many utilities for overwriting a drive, but I use DBAN, available free at www.dban.org. The program creates a boot disk which then writes over your hard drive several times. It conforms to the minimum standards for Canadian government agencies.
You download the program from their web site, following the clear instructions (on their web site or in a readme file) to create a floppy, CD or DVD. Then insert the disk into the computer containing the hard drive you want to wipe and start up the computer (you may have to go into Setup to change the order of boot devices so the computer will boot from the floppy or CD/DVD drive first; watch your screen on boot for which key to press to enter setup and then look around for the boot options). You'll be asked whether you want to completely erase everything on the hard drive and you'll say yes. You can watch DBAN making several passes over the hard drive, rewriting all the bits. When it's done there's nothing left, and the new user will need to create partitions, format the drive and install an operating system.
From the DBAN web site: "Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction."
Note that there are some situations where DBAN might not work without tweaks, such as if you have a RAID system with multiple hard drives. I saw that if you have a duo-core processor you need to use a certain version.
Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal
by bobbychaudhry - 11/2/08 5:35 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
That is really good idea to give them for god cause. As you mentioned few are attached in, and few are not.
First, you can do with the attached in the computer drives ( make sure assign the volume name to the spare Hard Drive)to save from the mistake to loose date on your C:\ or keeping drives.
First method:Easy step is just select your spare drive in my computer.
Right click on the drive and format it. still that will ask you to confirm to format.
This way hard drive will be empty.
Second method:
Use the this tool ' Active@ KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful.
you can download
http://downloads.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000375,39059659s,00.htm
Install on you computer, run and select the spare drive.
This way will be completely removed all the files.
I am sure this will help you to clear the data files.
NOTE: Please make sure to assign the volume names ( Hard drive with names)
cleaning hard drive
by billww--2008 - 11/2/08 5:43 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
How do i clean all data from hard drive?
Wiping data
by fihart - 11/2/08 6:58 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you want to protect yourself without destroying the hard drive just plug the drive into a spare IDE and power connector in the computer (usually simplest to disconnect the CD/DVD drive temporarily and use that one). Then power up the computer and first make sure you identify the drive in My Computer then (when you're sure you can tell the difference between that and your own boot drive) format the drive you want to donate.
If you have a laptop you can get an IDE to USB adapter which will facilitate the same thing.
Formatting will not foil someone with sufficient knowledge to unformat a drive -- but there's little chance your drive (or your data) will warrant that.
A couple of options
by victork1 - 11/2/08 9:24 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Some people will tell you to just place the hard drive near a powerful magnet. Theory says that that should do it, even though I have never tried it myself. This could be the best option for the drives that are not currently installed, if you don't know how to put them back or don't want to do it.
What you can do with the drives that are installed is run a program that will delete files in accordance to the Department of Defense standards (which I think requires the deletion method to overwrite data 7 times to consider it unrecoverable). Go to download.com, type in "hard drive eraser", narrow by "free", sort by "user rating" (this is my own personal way to make sure that I am not downloading crap). The 2nd, 3rd and 4th options seem to be what you are looking. Just download, install and follow instructions afterwards.
Good luck.
Victor
Getting rid of personal data.
by bobfrod - 11/2/08 4:19 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Format the drive.
Use the eraser program
by c_madden - 11/2/08 4:24 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Downlaod a program called eraser. I believe it has an option to create a boot floppy disk so you can wipe out the entire hard drive you wish to donate including the operating system (Windows).
If you are just taking out a secondary hard drive from your computer, simply backup any data from say (D Drive) to some where else for yourself. Then use the eraser program to wipe that drive. Eraser has an option to overwrite the free space on the drive as well. You can set it up to do 1 pass or upto 35 passes. The 7 pass DOD (department or defence) should be enough for most people. If you think that the data is more sensitive go for the 35 pass otpion. You may need to leave the computer on for days however to clear it up. More passes = more time.
If you only have the one hard drive in your system (ie. C: drive), you need to make a boot disk to boot from. If you want to pass on the computer so that windows still works you need to make sure you have al the driver files for all the devices in your computer. EG. Video card, sound card etc. You may need to search for them if you haven't kept the disks or CD for these. Once you have the drivers, burn them to a CD or DVD rom.
You now can boot the eraser boot disk you have made, run it, then install windows back on the computer.
Allow yourself about 2 days to do this, however most of this time you don't need to be in attendance at your computer.
Good luck and good on you for passing on equipment that still works well enogh for someone and doesn't end up as waste.
To delete Data.
by sbeverid - 11/2/08 6:54 PM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There may be utilities that can retrieve from this but they would have to be very keen.
If you can get a utility to do a Low Level Format and have the time, I think this would get rid of most things. I have only used it once on a IDE Drive and it took forever.
However I have heard that Government agencies can get just about anything back even after a drive has been partially destroyed, pending criminal procedings, such as for paedophile rings.
The long term solution would be not to have anything embarassing or overly sensitive on a hard drive. Back up to Tape or Solid State. Tape can be burned and solid state can be smashed.
Gets away from your charitable instincts though.
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