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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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You need to download something called Boot and Nuke. Burn it to a CD and then run it.
It will completely wipe everything on your old PC. Can take up to a day! |
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If it was me, I'd just take the hard drive out and stick it in a vice  anybody who is lucky enough to receive your donation of a of shouldn't begrudge having to buy a hard drive for it - they're dead cheap nowadays anyway...  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"You need to download something called Boot and Nuke. Burn it to a CD and then run it.
It will completely wipe everything on your old PC. Can take up to a day!"
But you'll need to reinstall windows after. Or just give it away with the windows CD. |
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If you don't feel confident then don't open it up, even after its been unplugged and switched off for a while you can still get a nasty surprise off some of the capacitors and bits in there...
I love the steam roller idea a hammer is pretty useful at times hehe |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Thanks for all the replies
If it was me, I'd just take the hard drive out and stick it in a vice
I've thought about that, but don't have a clue where to start  "
Duke and Nuke without doubt. Put it in the computer. Go away for a day. Come back. Take CD out. Give it away. Easy!
No taking things to bits. No hammers. And it completely destroys everything on the drive. When you delete things normally, a retrievable shadow stays on the drive. You need to get rid of that shadow.
Duke and Nuke is downloadable at dban.org |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"I'd like to be certain. I favour a steamroller. "
 I thought a factory restall would do the cleaning part of yer hard drive i thought it had for me and still do freed everything up 2 and a half years of c**p gone. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"I'd like to be certain. I favour a steamroller. I thought a factory restall would do the cleaning part of yer hard drive i thought it had for me and still do freed everything up 2 and a half years of c**p gone. "
It wouldn't take too much effort for someone to recover it as said above specialist programs are 99% successful removing the hardrive and destroying it 100% |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"I'm donating my old PC, having purchased a new all-in-one, any suggestions on how I clean the hard drive?
Plenty of suggestions on Google, but I want to make sure the HD is clean."
Hard drives are never completely cleaned! |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"If it was me, I'd just take the hard drive out and stick it in a vice anybody who is lucky enough to receive your donation of a of shouldn't begrudge having to buy a hard drive for it - they're dead cheap nowadays anyway... "
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"I'm donating my old PC, having purchased a new all-in-one, any suggestions on how I clean the hard drive?
Plenty of suggestions on Google, but I want to make sure the HD is clean.
Hard drives are never completely cleaned! "
They can be with the right software but it's got to do multiple writes to every sector on the disk. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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it;s difficult (but not impossible with the right software & time) to completely eradicate everything on a HDD.I've scared a few people with what I've been able to recover in the past using Data Recovery Wizard even after the HDD had been repartioned & reinstalled |
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There is only one way to make sure that the data on a hard-drive is unrecoverable...
After using military grade wiping and overwriting software to clean the hard-drive you need to use a large diameter drill to turn it into Swiss cheese, then guillotine the platters and destroy the PCB chips.
(A few years ago I worked for a company that refurbished ex bank, police and government PCs. This is how we had to dispose of hard-drives to guarantee data security.) |
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"I'm donating my old PC, having purchased a new all-in-one, any suggestions on how I clean the hard drive?
Plenty of suggestions on Google, but I want to make sure the HD is clean.
Hard drives are never completely cleaned!
They can be with the right software but it's got to do multiple writes to every sector on the disk."
Actually if you know what you are doing and have access to a tunnelling electron microscope you can recover anything that has ever been written to a hard-drive. In fact there are a number of companies that specialise in doing just that sort of work. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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Everyone suggesting physically destroying the drive, I'm afraid to say unless as one post suggested you drill and guilotene the platters then you will not destroy the data and even then if your lucky you could conceivably retrieve the data.
The only way to clean a hard drive is to overwrite the data with random data many thousands of times.
However if you give away your pc the likleyhood of someone gaining any uswfyt information in a .domestic setting is relatively small despot what the daily mail reports.
So the conclusion is it's up to you how safe you feel.
Personally I wouldn't worry on the slightest.
The biggest risk to your personal data is reused and easilly guessed passwords, not updating your anti virus and operating system and unsecured WiFi connections. |
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"I put the hard drive in the BBQ and use a blow torch on it"
That is not very wise...
It is very easy to take a hard-drive apart, clean the fire (smoke) damage from the platters and then reconstruct the data...
Look up 'disaster recovery' and see what services are easily accessed without inside knowledge. 
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