Wipeing an old PC

[Tracey]

I have finally decided to cut the cord on my very first PC which i replaced a few months ago. I would like to give it to a charity or recycle company but before i do this i would like to * wipe it * of all traces of me and my activity. How do i do this as i believe that just deleting things isnt enough ?

Thanks in advance for any advice,
Tracey

[Hibee]

Hi Tracey

Have a look in here..... http://www.killdisk.com/

Cheers

Hibee

[Tracey]

Thanks Hibee, the only problem i have here is that i am no longer able to use or download anything from the internet on the old pc.

[Alan SHARP]

Greetings Tracey.

The question is - "Who old is Old?"

Unless it's that old it only had a port for the five and a half inch original floppy disc, it should be possible to copy on to a suitable disc, with a newer machine, and transfer back to the old machine, any programme written for that period.

If it's that old you were using programmes like Word Perfect, few would have the ability today to read the files. Or is it a Mac ?

I'm sure AndrewP could advise if you PMed him with a few facts about the computer and the files you wanted destroyed.

Alan SHARP.

[LesleyB]

Hi Tracey

If you want to delete absolutely everything on the HD, you could reformat the disk. That will also delete the operating system, so the PC will not start up again in a useable state without re-installing the Operating System i.e. what ever version of Windows it came with, which you should have on a CD (or series of floppies?? Depends on age/OS) which came with the PC.

Best wishes
Lesley

[AndrewP]

I'm sure AndrewP could advise if you PMed him with a few facts about the computer and the files you wanted destroyed.

I don't know the humane way to confidently remove all traces of you and your work from your PC. As Lesley says, the easy thing to do is a full re-format of the hard disk. After that there is only a small minority of geeks / experts who could restore information that was on it. As far as I understand, reformatting deletes the index that tells your system where to find anything on the disk.

My old PC is still here. I hadn't considered recycling it. I was going to take the hard disk out and hammer the living daylights out of it, and take the remains (PC and disk) to the council tip.

All the best,

AndrewP

[Tracey]

Hi Tracey

If you want to delete absolutely everything on the HD, you could reformat the disk. That will also delete the operating system, so the PC will not start up again in a useable state without re-installing the Operating System i.e. what ever version of Windows it came with, which you should have on a CD (or series of floppies?? Depends on age/OS) which came with the PC.

Best wishes
Lesley

WHAT !!!

Windows XP was already installed on it when i bought it and didnt come with the disc but since then the *man who does* installed Windows XP Professional on it and i dont have that disc.
Hunting around on the web i did find a site which had what looks like a very easy quide on how to do it but i might just give it back to the *man who did* to do it

Alan i am to young to have a very old pc - whats a floppy disc ? !

Andrew i just thought that i would give it to one of those schemes that gives old pc,s to those in the community that cant afford one and as there is some life left in the old one and with an overhaul should do someone a turn for a while.

[CalumD]

Hello Tracy

To answer your question:---

Unless you take a hammer to your old hard disk then it is hard to hide any info on it.

There are many free programs which will help hide/delete everything on an old hard drive. However, to do this you will have to attach your hard drive as a "slave". Even then some info may remain on the hard drive.

If you only want to give the "box" to the charity then the best advice is to remove the hard drive and destroy it.

Calum D

[jgmills]

Hello Tracey,

I use a piece of software called BCWipe from http://www.jetico.com. This software uses DOD (Department of Defence) techniques to wipe the file - It will overwrite the info in the file 7 times with various rubbish so that it can't be recovered. It also allows you to wipe your swap file, free space and the odd bit of disk that files do not fill up, leaving operating systems and other programs able to continue running, if you want someone to be able to use the computer afterwards.

I use it to destroy my banking details, and to prove to myself that it works I downloaded some software that will recover deleted files, but it couldn't recover the files I'd wiped.

It's quite a small application so you could transfer it to your old PC by USB stick.

Cheers
John

[emanday]

Hi Tracey,

One of the companies I contracted with were selling off old PC's and the techies first reformatted them three times, then reinstalled the original operating system. It had to be a full reformat, rather than the "quick" type though.

They seemed convinced this would fox any attempt to recover anything and the software they used to try and do that failed to succeed.