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Author Topic: clearing a PC hard drive  (Read 948 times)

Offline 63tb

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clearing a PC hard drive
« on: September 14, 2009, 08:39:38 AM »
Folks,

I am going to donate some old PCs to charity and I want to clear everything off the hard drives. Can you recommend a utility that does a good job of this?

Thanks

63tb
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Offline Tac

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2009, 09:25:21 AM »
im sure skuzzy can give you the name for what im going to suggest... i know what it does but not the name of the program :P

its a program that does a deep format by writing 0's to the hard drive. there's no data that I know of that will be left on that disk once its done. no image, no partitions, nothing.
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Offline eddiek

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2009, 09:34:30 AM »

Check the hard drives to see who manufactured them.
I've used the Western Digital utilities before, and wrote the entire drives to 0's.
I'm pretty sure all the hard drive manufacturers have similiar downloadable utility programs you can use to completely erase your hard drives.
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Offline Mickey1992

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2009, 09:59:20 AM »
Remove the HD from the PC and find the largest stereo speaker in your house.  Press the HD to the speaker magnet and move it around.  :D

Or you could just donate the PC without the hard drive.
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Offline OOZ662

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2009, 10:15:15 AM »
Many of the "professional" PC donation and recycling sites will put a drill press through your hard drive three times and use monetary donations to buy fresh ones.
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Offline ChickenHawk

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2009, 11:49:36 AM »
Go to Download.com and search for "scrubber."  You should be able to find a disk scrubber that fits your needs and will do multiple passes to ensure all data is scrubbed.
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Offline batch

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2009, 12:10:11 PM »
its really a question of how sensitive is the data youre trying to erase...... there is no product out there that can 100% guarantee total erasure....... this is why comapanies drill holes or otherwise destroy HDs to insure they cannot be read.........

if youre simply trying to get rid of those bedroom pics from your honeymoon a simple low level format is enough.....

of course as mentioned most charities expect not to receive the HD in the first place...... so your best bet is removal
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Offline Stalwart

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2009, 01:36:17 PM »
There's no need to drill a hole through your hardware.  :rolleyes:  Our company regularly uses WipeDrive from White Canyon to securely erase all data from our hard drives.  This utility easily exceeds the Department of Defense requirements for securely erasing an entire disk.  It's not free.$39.95 USD.

http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php
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Offline OOZ662

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2009, 02:02:09 PM »
Nobody said there was a need to. Rather that it's generally a policy of the bigger charities  and recycling centers to drill three holes in the drive.
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Offline Stalwart

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2009, 02:27:56 PM »
Quote from: OOZ662 on September 14, 2009, 02:02:09 PM
Nobody said there was a need to. Rather that it's generally a policy of the bigger charities  and recycling centers to drill three holes in the drive.

OK, well, if there's sensitive data on the drives, they would do well perform a wipedrive on the disks before they drill them, or before you donate your machine to them.  There are specialists in data recovery that can get data, at great effort and expense no doubt, off crushed, drilled, and burnt hard drives.

We work with health care claims data for federal and state programs, including the VA.  Our systems security comes under great scrutiny.  I'm one hundred percent sure the WipeDrive product will do the trick without destroying your hardware.  I'm sure there are competitive products.  I'm just not familiar with any.
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Offline gyrene81

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #10 on: September 14, 2009, 02:34:26 PM »
Here...the free version is the best available...DoD standards.

Active Killdisk

I use the licensed version at work with the KGB algorithm. Just download the free version and run that drive through twice...data is unrecoverable without destroying the drive.
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Offline Die Hard

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #11 on: September 14, 2009, 07:35:29 PM »
Free, open source.

http://eraser.heidi.ie/
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Offline 63tb

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2009, 10:51:44 PM »
Thanks all!

We did use these PCs over the years for tax stuff so we were concerned about personnal info on the drives. Maybe the safest thing is to pull the hard drives, but some of the programs you have described sound interesting. Keeping the hard drives means one less thing the charity (church) has to be concerned about.

63tb
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Offline Anodizer

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #13 on: September 14, 2009, 11:23:03 PM »
If you just want to simply destroy all data on the drive and leave it unformatted then DBAN is for you...
http://www.dban.org/


DBAN is the industry standard..  The D.O.D. even uses it..  And it's free..  None of that 39.99 mumbo jumbo(probably works better too)..
Burn the ISO image to CD, boot from the CD, type autonuke, and you're good to go..  Depends on the size of the drive on how long it takes..
A 250 gig SATA takes about 3-4 hours to finish.. 
« Last Edit: September 14, 2009, 11:27:14 PM by Anodizer »
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Offline Anodizer

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Re: clearing a PC hard drive
« Reply #14 on: September 14, 2009, 11:23:55 PM »
Quote from: Mickey1992 on September 14, 2009, 09:59:20 AM
Remove the HD from the PC and find the largest stereo speaker in your house.  Press the HD to the speaker magnet and move it around.  :D

Or you could just donate the PC without the hard drive.


Doing this will physically destroy the drive..  Not a good idea if you want the drives to be usable...
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