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Making sure you get rid of your data

BillieTheBotBillieTheBot Posts: 8,721 Bot
Reformat the drive, write lots of 1' and 0's all over the place repeatedly,

Then do the following :)
Beep boop. I'm a bot.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i hope you took that to the council tip after putting those lovely chemicals into the air.

    people would only go to those lengths if they had something to hide...hmmm..
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah, I have sold a couple of PC's which had hard drives that I've personally used. I just reformatted them and put a fresh copy of Windows on before it went to the buyer. If someone was interested in buying said HD as a computer part, then yes, you'll assume that they have a bit of knowledge, as they're obviously using it to build a PC. If they're buying a PC whole off you, then you'll assume that they're not technically inclined enough to go about stripping data off hard drives that have been already formatted over.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    so MrG... What are you hiding!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Burning won't do a lot, data could still be recovered unless the the platters are smelted. A lot of data recovery firms will be able to recover data from burnt disks.

    If your worried about privacy then files you don't need any more (especially sensitive ones) erase with something like Eraser and wipe your disk with DBAN if your selling it, also use encryption, I recommend Truecrypt as it offers some awesome features, two of which I like are pre-boot authentication (you can encrypt your whole disk or just encrypt the Windows partition) and it now offers an encrypted hidden operating system so you can have your sensitive information on the hidden O/S and nobody will know it's there, not even by analyzing the disk, same goes for TC containers, hidden or otherwise.
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