erasing hard drive

Q

qaztwo

Petty Officer 1st Class
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Jun 26, 2004
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I bought a new computer a few months ago and my old one is either going to charity or a friend. Question is whats the best method for erasing the hard drive short of destroying it. Running XP, if I simply reformat the drive does windows go bye bye.

thanks
 
orion25

orion25

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Re: erasing hard drive

No a format will not "erase" the HD. If you have really sensitive data on there donate the comp with no HDD. Then take a drill and put two 1/2" holes all the way through the HD. Destruction is the only way to ensure the data can not be read by someone else. You cam buy a cheap HD (newegg.com) for less than $50 if you wanted to donate or sell it with a HD.
 
J

JasonB

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Re: erasing hard drive

Good point orion, destruction is the only completely positive way. If I remember right, the govt standard for non-classified data is 3 or 7 complete erase/overwrite cycle. even then there can be fragments of data left. Drives that contain classified data get completely destroyed to the point of there is a maximum size that chunks of the platter can be left in when it is broken up.
 
orion25

orion25

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Re: erasing hard drive

For a DoD (Department of Defense) wipe you have to write 1's & 0's (alternating) 7 times. The data would still be recoverable but it would be VERY expensive. The DoD wipe is for non classified data only. Anything classified is shredded (yes there are hard drive shredders out there). I work for a Tech company and if any HD containing proprietary or HR material needs to be replaced the old drive gets at least three 1/2" holes drilled through it after it is copied.
 
_brad_

_brad_

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Re: erasing hard drive

orion25 said:
No a format will not "erase" the HD. If you have really sensitive data on there donate the comp with no HDD. Then take a drill and put two 1/2" holes all the way through the HD. Destruction is the only way to ensure the data can not be read by someone else. You cam buy a cheap HD (newegg.com) for less than $50 if you wanted to donate or sell it with a HD.
Click to expand...


Bingo.
 
Q

qaztwo

Petty Officer 1st Class
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Jun 26, 2004
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Re: erasing hard drive

not wanting to sell just give away, didn't know if the computer would be of any value without the hard drive.

Anyway for piece of mind will just remove.
 
Summer Fun

Summer Fun

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2,251
Re: erasing hard drive

Active@ KillDisk is powerful and compact DOS software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. This is security software for unrecoverable data elimination for any computer capable of booting in DOS mode from floppy drive. It uses access to the drive?s data on a physical level via BIOS bypassing logical drive structure organization, thus it does not matter operating systems and file systems located on the machine, it can be DOS, Windows 95 / 98, Windows NT / 2000 / XP, Linux, Unix for PC. Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody :)
 
orion25

orion25

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Re: erasing hard drive

If you are giving it away then remove the HDD and destroy it. Anyone that gets a free PC should have no problem spending $40 to $50 on a new HDD.

I have built many computers and given a few of them away when I upgraded. I currently have 2 80gb and 3 40gb HDD's laying around because I did not give them away with the computers and have not had the time to practice my destruction techniques on them. I will be taking one of them apart so I can see what they look inside though.

Personally my financial and internet data is WAY more valuable than a $50 to $100 HDD.................

That being said, I did sell a pair of 36GB Western Digital Raptors but they were on a RAID0 array and I did a DoD wipe on them three times after I installed my 320 gb seagates............ I got $200+ for those HDD's.
 
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