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My mom wants to get rid of two old computers that have some of her and my dad's old financial information on them. How can I get rid of this info?

(without taking a hammer to the hard drive.)

Degauss the hard drives.

Dalton wrote:Degauss the hard drives.

Huh?

(Me=computer illiterate)

Darksider wrote:

Dalton wrote:Degauss the hard drives.

Huh?

(Me=computer illiterate)

find a bigass magnet and put it against the HD.

Oh. I um, already did that.....

But it matters no longer since my mother just took a hammer to the hard drive and vacumed up the peices......

Degaussing it would not have been effective, but the HD is in pieces anyways. You would have to use some sort of file-shredding tool which would overwrite the data with junk seven separate times.

And next time, give 'em Linux and set it up to run with an encrypted filesystem.

Smashing is always a fun way to dispose of stuff

low-level format the hard drives and either put it up on e-bay or see if a college or university will take them off your hands. Most places like that will gladly take an old computer like that and either stick it in a lab or use it for demo purposes.

Vertigo1 wrote:low-level format the hard drives and either put it up on e-bay or see if a college or university will take them off your hands. Most places like that will gladly take an old computer like that and either stick it in a lab or use it for demo purposes.

it depends on how old he machine is. pretty much anything over 5 years old and nobody will take it.

You can always microwave crap.

Well, if you're looking to get rid of some really old hardware, you can always look around for a local computer recycling center. There are companies that will take old hardware, break it down into components, check them, and resell them... I assume that means desoldering everything, disassembling everything but I don't know exactly how the process works.

Just because you take a hammer to a hard drive does not mean it is completly erased, Only fire or extensive demag will competly clear it to a reaal determined person.... who happens to have access to a machine I know of roughly the size of a VW Beetle that can examin any hard drive as long as the parts are above conffetty size... though your probably not going to find those just anywhere

Mr Bean wrote:Just because you take a hammer to a hard drive does not mean it is completly erased, Only fire or extensive demag will competly clear it to a reaal determined person.... who happens to have access to a machine I know of roughly the size of a VW Beetle that can examin any hard drive as long as the parts are above conffetty size... though your probably not going to find those just anywhere

I sincerely doubt i'll find somone willing to get one of those machines, dig through a garbage dump to find the right bag (they were real small peices that were easily vacuumed up), and go to all the trouble of getting the information just to take a peek at my parents out of date financial records.

Microwaving it probably wouldn't work. Low-level format wouldn't work, either.

phongn wrote:Microwaving it probably wouldn't work. Low-level format wouldn't work, either.

So what should I do with the next one, blow it up?

Huh? Why can't you just tell the computer to format and wipe everything out?

Well I guess if you need to, rip out the hard drive and short it out by dousing it in cold water. Remember the guy who decided to "bathe" his computer?

GoldenFalcon wrote:Huh? Why can't you just tell the computer to format and wipe everything out?

Because the data is still recoverable, that's why.

Well I guess if you need to, rip out the hard drive and short it out by dousing it in cold water. Remember the guy who decided to "bathe" his computer?

That does nothing to secure the data.

Darksider wrote:So what should I do with the next one, blow it up?

Use a file-shredding utility. PGP Freeware includes one; just right-click a file, go to the PGP submenu and hit "wipe." (It also includes utilities to cryptographically sign your email, encrypt email and files and whatnot).

Darth_Zod wrote:

Vertigo1 wrote:low-level format the hard drives and either put it up on e-bay or see if a college or university will take them off your hands. Most places like that will gladly take an old computer like that and either stick it in a lab or use it for demo purposes.

it depends on how old he machine is. pretty much anything over 5 years old and nobody will take it.

Um... my main computer is almost 5 or 6 years old... and many people may want cheap computers for use as servers and whatnot, for example I have a 6 or 7 year old PII-233 box that I'm setting up as a server over break.

Grind all platters down into dust, then put in a clay pot (several just in case, and do this outdoors), and put some thermite(aluminum powder and rust) on top, and ignite with magnesium strip. Then grind the hardened slag down to dust again and repeat.

Pu-239 wrote:Grind all platters down into dust, then put in a clay pot (several just in case, and do this outdoors), and put some thermite(aluminum powder and rust) on top, and ignite with magnesium strip. Then grind the hardened slag down to dust again and repeat.

Then grind that slag into dust again, mix it with cement, let it harden and drop it into a near by river.

I have always wondered about this magical "recovering" or "undeleting" of files. How the hell does it work? how the hell is it even possible especially if you've taken a magnet to the drive or smashed it up?

Please forgive my ignorance.

Icehawk wrote:I have always wondered about this magical "recovering" or "undeleting" of files. How the hell does it work? how the hell is it even possible especially if you've taken a magnet to the drive or smashed it up?

Apparently there are methods to determine the last few "flips" for each individual bit on the HD; therefore if you just used a magnet it might not wipe the data to a recoverable state. As for smashing it up, if you can 'read' the data off the pieces and then reconstruct what it should be arranged like, there you go.

Undeleting files works because when you delete something, you're really just removing a 'pointer' to that file and telling the system that it may freely use that space. Unless some sort of wiping tool is used, the actual data remains on the media until overwritten.

Put it in a really hot furnace. I bet that machine can't recover data from a liquified hard drive

Darth_Zod wrote:it depends on how old he machine is. pretty much anything over 5 years old and nobody will take it.

then there's always NASA