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I am in the middle of an important project,but when I’m done I may sell my computer to a friend…and obviously want my privacy protected.I thought a System Restore does the trick,but was just told otherwise.
download and run that. it will wipe the drive cleaner than a yekki’s house on the first night of pesach
With DBAN, as bombmaniac is suggesting, you would wipe the entire hard drive completely. At that point, the only way you can use the computer would be to install an operating system along with the necessary drivers.
Assuming you have the rescue or restore disk for your computer, this should be no problem.
my advice…give it to a technician and tell them what you want. if you use DBAN you will get a computer with a perfectly clean hard drive. no windows no nothing. everything would be gone. you would have to reinstall windows and all your programs.
It depends what brand and how old your computer is. Most computers nowadays have a windows image stored on your hard drive that will reinstall windows after reformatting it. Reformatting will completely wipe your computer clean so make sure you have anything you want saved backed up. It will start again like the first time it started and will ask you to make a user name and password. Be careful though because some computers will require you to have a restore disk to reinstall windows and the company will usually charge you $20 or so for it.
On a side note, never play around with system config. I by mistake unchecked the wrong program last week and my computer wouldn’t start. I had to completely reformat the hard drive which is why I know I about this. (thank god my friend was able to back up my stuff using linux beforehand)
it will wipe the drive cleaner than a yekki’s house on the first night of pesach
Now THAT’S what I call CLEAN.
watermelon, the reason to use DBAN or a program like it is because you are never really sure where on a hard disk data may be stored. Reformatting does not really remove all that has been previously written to the disk but whether or not data can be recovered depends on the skill of the person making the effort.
While you may trust your friend to not go on a fishing expedition for data on the hard drive included in the computer you sell him, you never know who will have access to the machine in the future including when your friend gets rid of it.
That’s why in some businesses like banks and law firms, the only acceptable means of getting rid of old computers includes both wiping the hard drive and then physically destroying it.
Regarding a rescue or recovery disk, these are used to restore your computer to the way it was “out of the box.” As mentioned by myself and others, when you wipe a hard drive, it is completely blank. (That means that the image mentioned by yeshivaguy1 is also gone.)
With a rescue or recovery disk, you put it in the drive and it re-installs Windows and any utilities and drivers provided for the particular computer. (This is one of the ways you would install a new hard drive although there are others.)
Some laptop manufacturers include such a disk when you buy the computer and others include a utility (usually noticeable with an icon on the desktop) so you can make your own disk. Quite likely, if you go to the website of the laptop manufacturer’s support department, you can buy the right disk for your computer.
As an example, I looked up Toshiba. They charge $24.95 for a Recovery DVD. http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/System-Recovery-and-Recovery/Recovery-media/m-p/9148#U9148
Please note: Recovery DVDs are configured so that they will work only for a specific brand and model of computer so people do not try and use them as a substitute for buying Windows.
If you don’t know what it is you shouldn’t be doing it
Data is physically put onto the hard drive. When you delete a file, or even the whole disk, it only marks those areas as overwriteable. Until it is overwritten, the information can be retrieved with free software.
If you choose to destroy the drive, you’ve gotten rid of everything. Nothing is written to the “computer itself” except for some BIOS data. The best way to destroy a drive is to leave it on top of the product scanner in a supermarket (or any other powerful magnet) for thirty seconds.
ItcheSrulik, I didn’t know that laser scanners have magnets, but who cares? The problem with using a magnet is that you never know whether or not you have been successful.
watermelon, when we say “destroy” a drive, we mean exactly that. Discarding a drive in the trash changes nothing.
Inside a hard drive are one or more disks called “platters.” It is these items to which the data is written. Some people have them cut up or have holes drilled into them. The method I once heard about that most impressed me involved melting them down.
If you should wipe a drive with DBAN, you can always keep it until you find someone who can destroy it. It’s not like it takes up a lot of space.
1-If the OS loads you weren’t. 😉
2-I’v only had to physicallt destroy an HD once. Being 18 at the time, (and not much older now) my method was to pound away with a hammer. I left the back on so it was hard work, but I got the profound pleasure of saying that I did a tech support job with nothing but a hammer. 😀
(the info below is an attempt to explain data storage on a PC in non-overly-technical terms)
-History of websites you visited.
-Emails you sent and received, especially if you use an email program such as Outlook, Windows Live, and others.
Why should you want the above info deleted?
-It may be private / personal.
-Keep it out of the hands of a potential identity thief, or worse.
How is the data stored?
On magnetized metal plates. Those plates are your hard drive.
Each ring contains information that was written by magnets.
There are special utilities that actually write over (overwrite) the area that data used to occupy, which is a more secure way of erasing it.
Even when the rings are erased, sophisticated programs may be able to recover some or all of the info by searching the magnetic fields on the sides of the rings.
How should you delete your confidential data?
Speak to a friend, relative, neighbor etc. who can actually come over and take care of it for you.
FYI, data on magnetic media can be destroyed by extremely strong magnets, high heat (like an oven), or physically destroying the media.
watermelon-
You’re very welcome.
ItcheSrulik, I took a set of platters to a welding shop. After less than a minute, I was confident no one would retrieve any data from what was left.
I thought you only heard about that method? Besides, that costs money. In general, if you open the drive itself, there is a very small chance that it will ever be usable again. Alternatively, give the platters to some little kids to play with.
ItcheSrulik, to be precise, the method I heard that is supposedly used by certain government agencies involves heating the platters until they liquify. If you can imagine what is required to do that to stainless steel (melting temperature of 2,750 degrees), you can understand how it is not so simple that everyone can do it.
With a welding torch, however, you can either bend the platters into non-circular shapes, or cut them into small pieces. Both will make it very difficult to ever recover data.
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