Re: Advice Needed - Giving Away Computers
- From: Mark F <mark49607@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:07:15 -0500
On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:26:13 -0600, Bruce Chambers
<bchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Lynn Q wrote:This freebie:
Hi there,
I have two old computers which are working perfectly well which I am giving
away. As I don't have the time to reformat the drives I wonder what else I
can do to ensure that any of my information is not accessible on these
systems. Both systems have Windows XP on them, one is XP Pro which was
upgraded from Windows ME. This is a 10 year old system, has had upgrades
along the way, but works fine for internet and so on. The other system is
also Windows XP, but Home. Again, this is a 2-drive system, fully
functioning, with 1 GB RAM, upgraded a few times. Both have XP SP2
installed.
So... What can I check and modify to ensure my information is unavailable to
the recipients? So far I have removed e-mail accounts that were set up.
Any advice on what to check... And how... Would be most welcome. Guidance
on how to clean up these machines without reformatting again would be much
appreciated.
By the way I will be giving the original installation disks away with the
systems. Will that cause any issues?
Thank you so much!
Lynn
Make the time. To protect your personal information and data from
any future users of average skills, you should, at the *_very least_*,
format the hard drive. You can do this using the original Installation CD.
If you wish to do a more thorough job of protecting your personal
data, WipeDrive
(http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php) meets U.S.
DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives,
and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and
applications. There are also several freeware utilities available for
this purpose, although they don't necessarily meet the DoD standards.
Google is your friend.
http://www.heidi.ie/node/6
sounds at least as good as any of the commercial products that I have
seen, but there is no way to erase revectored blocks with most disks.
Also, for some new disks you probably have to destroy at least some of
the ICs to be sure that your data is gone. (This shouldn't be an issue
for your 2001 or so disk.)
If you want to keep your data out of other people's hands you should
only write encrypted data on your disks in the first place. If you
don't want your great grandchildren not to see love letters to someone
who isn't their great grand parent, then you have to be even more
careful.
.
Otherwise, remove the hard drives and physically destry them.
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