Photo by Robbie1.
When disposing of an old computer, the absolute most important thing to do is render the data on it’s hard drive irrecoverable. Once that computer leaves your possession, anyone who finds it is free to examine it’s contents. Erasing files is not good enough, and as the productivity blog Dumb Little Man writes, formatting the hard drive is not effective either.
According to the Dumb Little Man article, a Washington Post reporter was able to recover 30% of the data from a hard drive that he previously formatted.
“… 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.”
Check out the Dumb Little Man article for links to PC, Mac and Linux programs that are all mean to wipe your hard drive clean.
