Sanitizing a Computer
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I agree with the "put in a new hard drive" school of thought.
No matter how much you wipe over the files you delete, what about the files you didn't delete because you forgot what's on 'em?
Once the drive passes into his hands, you'll never have any peace. You'll wake up at nights, sweating and wondering, "OMG! Did I delete . . .?"
No matter how much you wipe over the files you delete, what about the files you didn't delete because you forgot what's on 'em?
Once the drive passes into his hands, you'll never have any peace. You'll wake up at nights, sweating and wondering, "OMG! Did I delete . . .?"
There is no point in sweating over what is essentially a procedure most kindergarten children could've come up with. If you want to make sure your data is totally unrecoverable, then simply overwrite it. That's all any of these data wiping utilities ever do. They just wrap it in a pretty user interface and give you options to overwrite it several times "to make extra damn sure". But overwriting it just once is more than enough to hide the info from all but the richest spy agencies; a multipass overwrite will hide it even from them.johnnyone1 said:It says on the box "meets and exceeds U.S. department of Defence Standards". I'm not sure how reassuring that is.
It's made by a company called iolo technologies in California.
What software could I get to test whether the Drivescrubber 3 is doing its job?
IE: That I could use to try and recover the deleted files?
The first such utility I saw that could do this was in the DOS days, on the original Norton Utilities collection, called WipeDisk, I recall. It did all of the exact same things any of the modern utilities do, except its user interface was completely command-line based.
JohnFK said:With Windows XP, go to IE, Tools, then Internet Options, under General Tab, delete browsing history, cookies and temporary internet files.
Also, go to Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup and choose the files you want to delete (there are default choices).
Delete manually files in any folder containing adult jpg's etc. Go to Pictures folder.
In IE, go to Favourites, Organize Favourites, then delete your xxx pages saved. You may find the folder containing favourites and choose more than one at a time to delete.
Make sure any files in your recycle bin are emptied or permanently deleted.
Don't forget your emails.
Disagree.
Download any free recovery program . It will recover all the files noted above because anything deleted from the recycle bin is just tossed to some unused portion of your HD where almost anyone with a recovery program can retrieve it.
Trash the HD and buy a new one.
i gotta question too, im planning on giving away my old computer, but want to keep my hard drive, so is it possible for me to sell my old computer without a hard drive? also do computer stores charge a fee to remove a hard drive? i just want to sell the parts along with my old monitor, but dont wanna sell the drive, due to my info being on there.
jeezy
Sure you can try to sell a PC without a drive but people may be leary and wonder if it works.
Taking out a drive is not hard. You can do it youself. Tiger Direct used to give excellent directions for working on a PC on their site in the past. Google them.
Keeping an old drive is a good idea. You can get an encloseure for it and turn it into an external drive for extra storage, or even put it into another PC you have.
I saved an 11 yr old 8GB HDD from my first PC. It still runs great. I put a clean copy of XP along with my fav apps, programs, browsers, AV, etc., on it and use it as a reinstall CD whenever I want to format my PC. I just swap drives format then copy OS and all over again, swap the drives back again and am up and running in less than an hour with a freshly formatted drive. It's like getting a new PC.
Sure you can try to sell a PC without a drive but people may be leary and wonder if it works.
Taking out a drive is not hard. You can do it youself. Tiger Direct used to give excellent directions for working on a PC on their site in the past. Google them.
Keeping an old drive is a good idea. You can get an encloseure for it and turn it into an external drive for extra storage, or even put it into another PC you have.
I saved an 11 yr old 8GB HDD from my first PC. It still runs great. I put a clean copy of XP along with my fav apps, programs, browsers, AV, etc., on it and use it as a reinstall CD whenever I want to format my PC. I just swap drives format then copy OS and all over again, swap the drives back again and am up and running in less than an hour with a freshly formatted drive. It's like getting a new PC.
pjoe43 said:I heard the best way to dispose of any old drive you want to make sure nobody gets into is to put in on a concrete diveway then beat it a dozen times with a sledgehammer then pour some gasoline on it and let it burn for a few minutes. Then throw it away.
Quick....submit a patent! and by the way, regular or premium gas?
