Destroy your data on your old PC

With so many computers in use now days and the constant need to keep up with an extremely fast growing industry, everyone is buying new computers these days. But what to do with the old one? Selling it on Ebay or Craigslist is a great way to make a little extra cash, or giving it to a family member or friend is an excellent way to help out someone in need. But what about all the data that is stored on the hard drive? Everyday hundreds of identities are stolen, bank accounts drained and life savings blown by someone that has captured your private information. How can we cut back on this, how can you protect your self from future disasters and headache/heartaches? One way is to securely and completely destroy all personal data on your hard drive before you give/sell your old computer.





Destroy your data with DBAN

Darik's Boot and Nuke, even the name gives that 'safety net' feeling of freshly wiped out data. This is probably the easiest way to completely and permanently destroy any and all data on a hard drive. Use with caution, not even a clean room at the CIA can recover your data after this.

The process is very easy, just download a copy of the ISO image and burn it to a CD with something easy to use like ImgBurn. Just select Burn image to Disc at the start screen for ImgBurn, select the file icon, choose the downloaded ISO image from DBAN and go.

When you finish burning the disc just stick the disc into the drive, and once you boot to the DBAN prompt you'll see a menu, you can ignore pretty much everything in the menu and just type 'autonuke' at the prompt. After that DBAN will do what it does best. After that, remove the CD and either send the PC on it's merry way or you can re-install Windows if you like.

Advanced Method

If you're really worried or one of those conspiracy theory types and want to run a different type of wipe, or just like playing around with things like I do, then choose F3 or hit Enter at the prompt to head to the advanced selection screen. At this screen you can select which drive to wipe or hit the M key to change method. You will then be able to choose from a bunch of different types of wipe options. Although all you'll really need is the Quick Erase option.

And there you go, completely wiped hard drive and now that computer is ready to sell or give to a needy person.