The most important thing you need to do when disposing of an old computer is erase all of your data from its hard drive. Whether you’re selling the system to a friend or a stranger, or just tossing it in the trash, rendering your data irrecoverable is an essential responsibility that you have to yourself. Failing to erase your personal data from a computer that’s being passed off into strange hands could result in inconvenience, humiliation, and even identity theft.
By far the only way you can be absolutely sure your data is irrecoverable is the complete physical destruction of your computer’s hard drive, which we discussed previously in an article titled “Render your hard drive’s data irrecoverable“. Anything less may not stop someone with the right know-how and forensic equipment. We say this because simply deleting and/or overwriting files on your hard drive doesn’t guarantee they’re gone. In many cases, deleting or replacing a file is akin to erasing something written in pencil. It may appear to be gone, but if you look very closely you may very well be able to put the pieces back together.
If your system’s hard drive must remain usable (perhaps you’ve sold the computer to someone), then there are a number of software packages that claim to do an excellent job of erasing all of your data. Productivity website Lifehacker recommends Eraser for Windows, and OS X’s Disk Utility for Mac. Technology news site [Geeks are Sexy] recommends a number of other utilities and explains how they work in “Disk Wiping Utilities: How to Get Rid of Your Data Permanently“.
Disk wiping applications recommended by [Geeks are Sexy]:
[tags]privacy[/tags]
