Dear CNET members,
Happy Friday! Sorry I missed you all last week, I was out
sick, and didn't have the chance to write and send out this
newsletter. But I'm back in the healthy saddle again, so here
we go. This topic of donating hard drives probably couldn't
come at a better time, as I'm sure many folks who may be less
fortunate can benefit from this donation from Kathy. But
before handing these hard drives off to charity, we want to
ensure that none of Kathy's personal data can be retrieved by
others.
Kathy received an abundance of answers to help her remove
personal data from these hard drives, ranging from hard-drive
software utilities to wipe the drive clean, to the suggestion
of taking a sledgehammer to them to ensure no one gets a
chance to see what's on that drive. (Although we're not sure
how useful that is, if the drive has been beaten to
smithereens.) While some members suggested that Kathy simply
reformat the hard drive, others said that performing a basic
reformat simply isn't good enough. And to properly ensure
that her personal data is not retrievable, most members
recommended that she purge her drives with the help of a
software utility that will overwrite her entire drive with 0s
and 1s. With that said, while there are many suggested
utilities, the two most mentioned were Darik's Boot and Nuke
(DBAN) and Active@ KillDisk; both titles are free and come
highly recommended.
There are many great answers to go around this week, so if
you are contemplating on doing the good deed of donating your
computer or hard drives, give this week's answers a read. I'm
sure after you've gone through them, you'll be in good shape
to ensure that your private data on your hard drive stays
private before passing it along to others. If you have any
additional methods of purging your data from hard drives
(other than in a destructive manner), swing on by and post
your recommendations. Thanks everyone for your contribution.
Stay healthy and have a great weekend!
Cheers!
- Lee
Got suggestions? Send me an e-mail: messageboards@cnet.com
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I have several old hard drives that I would like to donate to
a worthy cause, but I am not sure how to get rid of all the
personal information that is stored on them. Any suggestions
as to what I can do? Some hard drives are not in the
computers and a couple of them are. Please provide step-by
step instructions on how I can thoroughly clean these drives
out. Thank you!
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