Erasing personal information

[speleobat2]

Hi all,

My husband is thinking about replacing his antique computer (nine years old) and the local high school accepts donations of used computers. How can we be sure that our personal information is gone from the hard drive before we give away this computer?

Carol

[Bob C]

How can we be sure that our personal information is gone from the hard drive before we give away this computer?

Carol

It depends on how paranoid you are about the information. The only way the US Dept of Defense will allow hard drives that had classified information on them out of their custody is to shred them first and unfortunately that is the only way to ensure that no one can read or recover data from a hard drive. If they are removed and "wiped" using special programs there is some residual data that can be recovered but it really takes a talented person with special equipment to do so.

A 9 year old computer is at the end of its useful life as far as the circuits go and repair is not an economic option. It's best use is as repair parts and then the hard drive is not needed so remove it and give them the remainder for parts. The hard drive can then be taken apart and the platters destroyed by using a screwdriver and scratching the surface numerous times before throwing them away. If you want to donate the hard drive then there is really no quick and easy way to "wipe" the drive unless you remove it and install it as a second drive on another computer.

In a Windows machine, deleting a file and then emptying the "Recycle Bin" does not really delete the file. It just puts a special character in the first space of the file name which allows Windows to know that it can be written over when necessary and on a large hard drive this will never be overwritten.

I personally have never given away a hard drive because I keep my financial information on my computer and I am paranoid! I just give everything but the hard drive away and then destroy the hard drive.

For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence

Bob C

[Currie]

There’s a similar risk if you buy a second-hand hard drive or second-hand computer with a hard drive. You don’t really know what the previous owner has been storing on the hard drive. It may have been something nasty and even though deleted and formatted if the authorities ever have reason to examine the hard drive they may find things for which you may get the blame.

If you have another desktop computer you may be able to install the old drive in that as extra storage. However if the old hard drive itself is as old as the computer it probably doesn’t have much capacity, is living on borrowed time, and wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

A computer so old that it’s running Windows 98 or Windows ME probably shouldn’t be used on the internet. Those operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft and are full of vulnerabilities. If you have an elderly computer that is struggling with Windows XP it may need a reinstallation of the operating system or perhaps just a memory upgrade will work wonders. Failing that there a many free flavours of Linux that can be used as an alternative to Windows and will operate much better and more securely. That’s if you’re into that sort of thing.

I read somewhere that the CIA formats etc their old hard drives and then shoots holes in them. That should work alright but you would have to watch out for the Rick O’Shays.

Alan

[Anne H]

Alan wrote:

I read somewhere that the CIA formats etc their old hard drives and then shoots holes in them. That should work alright but you would have to watch out for the Rick O’Shays.

Regards,
Anne H

[speleobat2]

Thanks Bob and Alan! This is exactly the information that I was looking for. I think it has Windows ME as the operating system and I'm not really sure what is on there. I don't remember just when we went to online banking etc. so we'll have to think about this some more!

Carol

[joette]

I had a second-hand lap-top & despite the fact my niece went over it with a fine tooth comb I came across some very nasty images! I am not very computer savvy so they obviously took little care in deleting these images.Not something I would have liked anybody else to have seen & thought were mine.There was also personal info on it too-e-mail addresses,financial & mortgage details etc attached to the photo files.