Clearing hard-drive of old laptop

[Hockeyguy15]

Does anyone know of a program that I can run that will take everything off my old laptop hard-drive so I can recycle it without having any personal information left on it?

[simmonjam1]

I've used webroot windows washer in the past. I like how deep you can erase items.

[ken0042]

Personally I would just do a regular format, pull the hard drive out and write the date on it. Stick it in a drawer and 10 years from now toss it.

Another option is to put it in a vise and drill a couple of holes through it.

[Bob]

DBAN

Download the bootable ISO and burn it to a disk. You can them wipe the drive once with all zeros (fastest) and there's nothing left. Additional passes with random numbers and such are largely a waste of time.

[Rathji]

As long as you can plug it into a functioning computer with an external enclosure or a USB adapter, I would use the new wipe hard drive feature on CCleaner 3.0. It will do up to 35 passes and have the option to just wipe empty drive space or all drive space. The empty drive space option is good if you really need to get rid of that incriminating porn from the hard drive before the tech savvy wife finds it.

If it is just a self contained computer that you want to wipe the drive, use DBAN as suggested in the previous post. It only does 3 passes and takes longer than CCleaner, but if 3 passes is good enough for the Department of Defense then it is good enough for me.

[cKy]

35 passes? jeebus, how long would that take on a 80 gig drive. It'd be a 3 day wipe marathon.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by cKy

35 passes? jeebus, how long would that take on a 80 gig drive. It'd be a 3 day wipe marathon.

I know... just like the last time I had tacos.

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by Rathji

As long as you can plug it into a functioning computer with an external enclosure or a USB adapter, I would use the new wipe hard drive feature on CCleaner 3.0. It will do up to 35 passes and have the option to just wipe empty drive space or all drive space. The empty drive space option is good if you really need to get rid of that incriminating porn from the hard drive before the tech savvy wife finds it.

If it is just a self contained computer that you want to wipe the drive, use DBAN as suggested in the previous post. It only does 3 passes and takes longer than CCleaner, but if 3 passes is good enough for the Department of Defense then it is good enough for me.

Wow that sounds a little more hardcore than I need. I just want to get rid of any left over banking info, sounds like DBAN would be the way to go.

Thanks though!

[Hack&Lube]

Dude, why not just keep the harddrive? How big is it?

If you are going to throw the laptop away, you should at least keep the harddrive. Buy a cheap laptop harddrive enclosure and you have a nice and tiny portable harddrive that fits in your pocket.

Heck, sell it on CP.

[kevman]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Dude, why not just keep the harddrive? How big is it?

If you are going to throw the laptop away, you should at least keep the harddrive. Buy a cheap laptop harddrive enclosure and you have a nice and tiny portable harddrive that fits in your pocket.

Heck, sell it on CP.

This.

I have a fancy little hard drive reader that I got at Memory Express that reads both 3.5" and 2.5" IDE or SATA drives. I simply pull out all my old hard drives and keep them. Even when you try to back every thing up you never know when you might need something you forgot to save. Having an old 10gb HD around isn't of much use but at 3.5"x8"x1" there's really no harm in putting it on a shelf with a few others to collect dust.

[Traditional_Ale]

If the laptop still works I'll take it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Bob

DBAN

Download the bootable ISO and burn it to a disk. You can them wipe the drive once with all zeros (fastest) and there's nothing left. Additional passes with random numbers and such are largely a waste of time.

My understanding is that with the incredible data densities of modern drives using GMR and perpendicular recording techniques, only a single pass is needed to wipe drives, as there isn't enough residual magnetic charge between the individual bits to do any meaningful data recovery.

A single pass is certainly sufficient regardless for consumers - no identity thief is going to be motivated enough to spend thousands of dollars to retrieve your hard drive contents - there are easier marks out there.