So your computer is a little dated and you've finally bought a new one. After copying over the data that you want to retain, what do you do with your old computer?
Well, donations and recycling are popular options, however, prior to that PC (or Mac) leaving your possession, you need to erase it's contents. Not doing so clearly leaves you vulnerable as years of your personal data is simply being put into the hands of complete strangers; some of which may be demented.
A recent article on the Washington Post points to several options. First, check out their result when doing as most would, simply formating the hard drive:
"A full format with a Microsoft Windows DOS-based floppy disk appeared to erase all of the data. But then I scanned the newly-formatted hard drive with Helix, a free forensics tool often used by law enforcement folks to recover incriminating data from computers seized from suspected criminals. Within 20 minutes, Helix had retrieved more than 30 percent of the data that was supposedly erased from the drive, including personal digital photos, records of which Web sites the laptop's owner had visited online, as well as Microsoft Word documents and other personal files"
Pretty scary. To do the job the right way, here are the tools they've recommended:
For PCs: Eraser (this is what I use)
For Macs: Burn, Superscrubber, or Drive Genius
Linux Alternatives: Wipe, BC Wipe, and Killdisk
To read more into it, here's Before You Get Rid of that Hard Drive... by Brian Krebs at the Washington Post.
Photo: TransCam
