PC hardware forum: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data?

If you have a Windows computer, simply download the free version of the Department of Defense standard-conforming disk-erasing software Active KillDisk at http://www.killdisk.com.

Not True!!!
I know of certain business that have hundreds of uses... They don't use more than 5 gigs on their machines and some of those machines have 250gig HDD's but they been partitioned @ 20gig. Its sad I know but company policies....

out of all the replys on cleaning the hard drive, you gave the best and direct answer out of all.i am 66 years old. retired computer tech at 65. you can always tell the think they are the greatest by their long replys & the way they put people down. wished i knew a much as they think they do.this is the reason i normly don't answer any questions. just waunted to say great answer. have a great day

what an idea. keep it up.

I would say why suffer with deleting the info and donating the drives.
Technology advances everyday and there is really no need for saving these items as newer will be better. Take a strong magnet and run it over the drives a few times and destroy the info and toss them into your trash can or dump them off at a recycling station.

I know, I know, most people are going to say the opposite and that its a great idea to donate items to causes. But how many times do you stash things away saying your going to donate them and they end up sitting in the bottom of your closet for YEARS!!!! I just hauled FOUR truckloads of JUNK to our waste facility and i was glad to get rid of it. Free of clutter and better off.

I agree with you, some members have truly displayed a cavalier attitude to a growing problem - electronic waste. Somehow we have become a nation where everything is disposable, not reusable. Having taught in a few improvished schools, I KNOW the value of a 20 gig or even 10 gig harddrive. So, If you can "safely" donate your HDD, do so, it will be one less item in the landfill, and who knows, maybe even a grateful recipient.

This is a very logical answer.
If the question is regarding a method of erasing the data , the replies are expected to be address the same.

Will restoring the hard drive produce the same result of erasing all data? I have a working desktop to get rid of and have the disk to restore the pc. If this produces the same result, I do not have to spend $ on software.

There ia a Software Program that is called CyberCrub.
It is what the United States Gov't uses.
I do not know if there is a trial version or not.
If you get the program and need help,
post another question / reply here on the Cnet Forum.

Thomas
Creola, Al

Hi,
Most of the manufacturers of hard drives offer free software with which you can write zeros on all the surface leaving the disc surface as when de disk was new. In big drives it takes some time to delete all data by writing zeros but then you are unable to retrieve any data from it.

Best luck
Cristin

There is a command to securely erase a disk that cannot be stopped,
even by powering off. It is performed by the internal processor within the disk drive and once it begins it it remembers that it started so that if you power off the system and give the drive to someone else, the first thing the disk does when it is powered up is to complete the erase.

The little 835KB zip can be download from:
cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
written to a floppy, CD or thumbdrive.


"Complete eradication of user data off drives can be accomplished by running data Secure Erasure utilities such as the freeware HDDerase downloadable here. It executes the Federally-approved (NIST 800-88) Secure Erase command in the ATA ANSI standard, which is implemented in all recent ATA drives greater than 15-20 GB."

also available on:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

Dennis G German, !DG12, Real-World-Systems.com

Dear Katthy C.

If you are donating yr. old Hard Disks for a good cause I would like to candidate to receive it if you wish.
I am a computer Technician and teacher here in Brazil for several years. Presently I'm intending to work in a project to mount computers for people who can not buy it. So, cause you decide to help us in this project yr. donation should be very well appreciated.

Best Regards,
Marisil Franca

P.S.: Please reply to my e-Mail address: mlfranca@hotmail.com

This is a very misunderstood, and very important topic: What can you do to make a used hard drive that had confidential data on it safe enough to give away.

First off: erasing files, reformatting and repartitioning the drive will NOT get rid of your confidential data. They will make it such that the average, garden variety user won't see such data, but it won't truly be gone, and any good techie could recover it. So those steps are not enough.

Now the next questions are: Are you the type of target that would make the CIA, FBI or NSA willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars recovering data from you hard drive? Or, alternatively, are you just paranoid?

There is ***NO*** way short of destroying the drive (think electric drill through the platters, massive sledge hammer, or incinerator) to make your data ABSOLUTELY non-recoverable. So if you are on Osama Bin Ladden's executive staff, or if you are the head of a drug cartel, well, then get out the drill and sledgehammer.

However, if you are a "normal" person, you can make the data on the hard drive non-recoverable very easily by simply "overwriting" the data. For a "normal" person, a simple overwrite, ONCE, with ANYTHING (even all zeros) is enough. What I often do is repartition the drive into one single partition, then fill it (until I get a "disk full" error) with multiple copies of a folder of TV shows or movies. Then, once it's completely full, I just erase everything, giving an apparently blank hard drive. And if someone goes in to "recover" what was there ..... they will recover the TV shows and movies. AND THAT IS ALL THAT THEY WILL RECOVER.

Could the original (pre-overwrite) data be recovered? Yes, but the cost and effort required would be astronomical (think hundreds of thousands of dollars). NO ONE ... not even civil law enforcement ... would do it just as an exercise, or as part of a "fishing expedition", and very few people have anyone who is THAT interested in their data to undertake such an exercise.

Now a few more comments:

Overwriting can be made more secure by doing it several times with certain specific patterns of data each time. There is government specification for doing such a wipe of drives that had classified (but NOT "top secret") information on them, and most "shredder" programs can do a "DOD" (Department of Defense) wipe. Fine, and technically correct, but for a normal person it's totally irrelevant and unnecessary. ONE single actual over-write with ANYTHING (even just all zeroes) is all that a normal person needs to be far safer than is necessary.

Another comment: For about 10 years every drive made has implemented the "secure erase drive" command, but almost no one knew about the existence of this command until about two years ago. It wasn't a secret, but word of it's existence just didn't spread far. This command is basically a "destroy yourself" command issued to the drive (in this case, "destroy yourself" means destroy your data, the drive itself is NOT destroyed or physically harmed in any way). This method, which once initiated occurs entirely WITHIN the drive itself, is both more secure and faster than anything you can do from outside the drive that has approximately equivalent security. For reasons that should be clear, some computers (in their BIOS) actually block this command, and you need a program to properly issue the command. But it's really the best way to go if you have a program that can use it and a comptuer that will allow the command to be issued. The Center for Magnetic Recording Research at UCSD (Univ. of Calif. San Diego) produced and makes available a free program that does this, see http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml, however it's not very user friendly. Many other shareware "drive wiping" programs that previously did the wiping in the conventional manner from the computer now also support using the "secure erase drive" command for this purpose. Note that this command may not be available if you are using a USB or Firewire interface, or in some cases, depending on how it is implemented, even a SATA interface.

Final comment: No matter how you do it, for any kind of wiping to do anything, every single sector on the entire disk drive has to actually be written to. This is going to take time ... and on a large hard drive, where there can be a BILLION sectors or more .... it may take a LOT of time, not minutes but hours, possibly even days depending on the drive size, how you are doing the wipe and the number of passes that you want made (again, for normal people 1 is enough, but if you are paranoid or have reason to use the DOD standards, then you will be making quite a few passes).

The easiest way to deal with a drive that is not in the computer is to use one of these (not necessarily from this source, but a similar device): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250308251659. Note, however, that a USB connection probably precludes use of the "secure erase drive" command in most instances.

Watzman, man I love this answer everything you wrote does make sense, been paranoic, working for bin lading etc. and about filling the drive with recorded movies or tv shows, well that's exactly what I was thinking about.