A member over at Ask Metafilter asks, “I’m sending an old computer off to recycling. What is the best way to delete old programs, files and personal information? Anything else I should do to it before recycling?“
Because we live in the age of identity theft, ensuring the security of your personal data is extremely important. Identity theives prey on people who are careless with information, and so you should always be sure that no one can recover yours when you get rid of a computer. Simply placing an old computer at the curb for sanitation to pick up is equivalent to nailing your completed tax forms to your front door.
All of this forewarning begs the question, how should you ensure the destruction of your personal information when you dispose of a computer? There are two methods: physical destruction and programmatical destruction.
Physical Destruction
Sophisticated computer forensics can recover almost any data that has been previously deleted, leaving physical destruction necessary for you to be absolutely sure that your private personal data is irrecoverable. When we say physical destruction we’re talking complete, total physical destruction. Smashing or drilling holes through a hard drive are not going to cut it.
What will cut it is something like drive slagging, where the hard drive platters undergo complete destruction. The guys behind the drive slagging website show you, in pictures, the process they used to completely incinerate the innards of a hard drive.
Programmatical Destruction
If physical destruction of your hard drive is beyond your means then you’ll have to settle for programmatical destruction, in which you use software to erase your data as thoroughly as possible.
Deleting all your files or formatting your hard drive are not acceptable methods of erasing your personal data because the files you erase can be easily recovered. When you delete a file, the operating system does not usually remove the actual file. It only removes the file’s name and location from the system’s index of files so that the space it occupied is available when future files are created and need to be written to the disk. Formatting your hard drive is not effective either because even if the actual data on the disk is overwritten, it’s somewhat equivalent to erasing a pencil’s writing. With the proper tools and the right know-how, someone will still be able to see it. What you need in order to programmatically destroy your hard drive’s data is software designed specifically to erase that data beyond reasonable means of recovery.
DBAN, or Darlik’s Boot and Nuke is one such program. You can download Darlik’s Boot and Nuke and create a DBAN boot disk. Reboot your computer with this disk, and DBAN will “automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.”
In conclusion, physical destruction is the only fool proof method of making sure no one will be able to recover your personal information should your computer fall into the wrong hands. Short of physical destruction, there are programs such as DBAN that will overwrite the data on your hard disk beyond reasonable means of recovery.
Caution!
Performing the actions in the process referred to as “disk slagging” could cause you serious physical injury or death. You should not attempt the physical destruction of your computer or hard drive by any means unless you have the help and supervision of an experienced professional.
Sources
- Ask Metafilter. “Recycling a computer“. May 25, 2006. Ask Metafilter.
<http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/38908>
