Dumb Question (2 Viewers)

[Enron]

I want to recycle or give a way my old Desktop. I want to wipe the hard drive for privacy reasons. Any suggestions?

 

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[Zlatan]

I used Darik's Duke and Nuke.

Free. Easy to use. Supposedly wipes everything clean when you do the 7-pass option.

 

[Martin]

I want to recycle or give a way my old Desktop. I want to wipe the hard drive for privacy reasons. Any suggestions?

The only sure fire way is to take out the magnetic plates and melt them.

 

[JCK]

A company I worked at used to drill a hole in their old hard disks.

 

[Bjerknes]

A good baseball bat always does the trick.

 

[Enron]

The only sure fire way is to take out the magnetic plates and melt them.

Meh I'm not that concerned with it.

 

[Martin]

Meh I'm not that concerned with it.

People will tell you that you can repeatedly overwrite your drives (and I mean not just delete the files and write to that area of the drive, but the whole thing) and this will tend to cause the tiny magnetic crests on your drive (which represent bits) to gradually get "washed out", because each write is slightly imprecise, so it will sort of "smooth out" the area.

But this is still somewhat theoretical and there's no way for you to check that it's unreadable without industrial strength equipment.

A strong magnetic field might be useful. Any thoughts on that approach, Jack?

 

[V]

A normal format will do the trick, if you're giving it to your average Joe.

 

[swag]

A good baseball bat always does the trick.

Or a Friday night, Burke, and several 40s.