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Wipping hard-drive for disposal/recycling of laptop?

  • 20-03-2008 7:45pm
    #1
    Múinteoir
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,184 ✭✭✭


    Hi there,

    I did a search to see if I could find a thread on this already, but I couldn't find one. So apologies if I'm covering old ground here, but what's the quickest and simplest way to wipe all personal info off your computer when disposing of it, or giving it away for recycling, so that others can't access personal details left on it. Thanks! :)


Comments

  • #2
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,125 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    Get dban. It can be booted from a floppy or cd and wipes the disk so that the data is un-recoverable.


  • #3
    HJL
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 582 ✭✭✭HJL


    would dban be recommended for just formatting a laptop, im not giving it away and the info on it isnt top secret or anything!
    but since i was formatting anyway would it be a good or bad idea?

    my laptop is about 2 and half years old and ive never formatted it yet, so its due a good old fashioned clean out, and ive heard about dban from googling the topic as ive used a registery cleaner before on an older pc.


  • #4
    ethernet
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,568 ✭✭✭ethernet


    HJL wrote: »
    would dban be recommended for just formatting a laptop, im not giving it away and the info on it isnt top secret or anything!
    but since i was formatting anyway would it be a good or bad idea?

    my laptop is about 2 and half years old and ive never formatted it yet, so its due a good old fashioned clean out, and ive heard about dban from googling the topic as ive used a registery cleaner before on an older pc.
    You could use it. It might take quite a while though -- if you're just reinstalling your OS, you might be best to let the OS installer reformat your drive. Windows lets you do NTFS or NTFS quick. As you might expect, 'quick' is, eh, quicker. Do the slower one if you have the time.


  • #5
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,125 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    When formatting a hard drive you don't actually erase the data you just erase the pointers to that data. This data only gets deleted when something over writes it. So someone can still get access to the data if they so wish. Dban over writes the hard drive with data so that it can't be accessed after wards.

    If getting rid of the hard drive or computer use dban, if formating and keeping it for yourself just format.


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