Got old computers you’d like to donate or throw away? Before you donate your old computer or throw it way, remember to completely erase or wipe the hard drive inside the computer.
You see, stuff you delete from your computer may not completely be gone. Folks with the right utilities can easily restore deleted files and documents that may contain sensitive and confidential information.
Thieves and bad guys would like to get their hands on your computer’s hard drive with all your sensitive information on it. Information like passwords, credit numbers, indentifying information and financial records are all valuable to rogues. So, here’s a tip – completely erase and delete all your information from the drive before tossing it.
When you want to delete sensitive info from your computer, there are many tools that can do the job. Most of these utilities are not free. If you have money spend, purchase a data-destruction utility or program to erase the drive. These programs completely erase the hard drive then fill it up again with random characters.
Good ones will repeat the process over and over again until the drive is overwritten with random data that no useful info can be gathered from it.
One such program that you can get for free is Derik’s Boot And Nuke utility. This program is free and does everything as described above. It erases your computer hard drive and fills it up again with random data until the content on the drive is completely useless.
To get started, go and download DBAN ISO image file from its download page and burn the image file onto a blank CD/DVD disc. Then boot the computer you want to get rid of from the image CD/DVD disc.
If you’re donating a Windows 8 computer, you can recycle your PC by completely resetting it to its factory defaults. To refresh your PC using Windows 8, press the Windows Key + C on your keyboard. Then select Settings –> Change PC Settings –> Update and Recovery. From there choose Remove everything and reinstall Windows.
So, that’s how you do it. If you’re using computer prior to Windows 8, use DBAN to erase your hard drive content. Windows 8 can delete and reset the computer from the Recovery option.
Enjoy and be safe.