How should I erase my HDD before I give it away?
I everyone Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com.
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Let's dive right to the question here.
"I would like to clear off, erase, all of the programs on my hard drive
and clean it up before I donate my computer to a worthy cause.
What's the best, simplest way to do this?"
Well, to begin with.
Good on you for donating your computer somewhere.
I like seeing technology.
The hardware involved in it get reused.
And there are often many organizations that can, depending on the technology
you're getting rid of, really make good use of some of those
pieces of equipment. But it's important to understand what it
is you're giving away and not give away too much.
One option: doing nothing.
You don't want to leave anything on that machine.
Remember, you might go through the steps of deleting some documents.
or uninstalling a few things,
but you really don't know what it is you've left behind.
It's possible that there are temporary
files containing personal information, registry entries,
files that could potentially be recovered containing personal information.
It's just not something you want to do.
What you really need to do is take
that extra step and start erasing the basic approach.
One approach to dealing with this is to format the hard disk.
Now, I want to make sure when we talk about formatting the hard disk that we're
not doing what would normally be called a quick format.
A quick format does not prevent the data on the hard disk from being recovered.
What you want is what's called a full format.
Depending on the tool that you're using,
you'll either specify full or you won't specify quick.
The bottom line is that a full format will take a lot longer.
It'll actually go over and overwrite the entire hard disk.
The problem, of course,
is if that's your system drive, that can be a little bit difficult
because, of course, you can't format the drive that's currently in use.
And if Windows is running, the drive is in use.
What you'll need to do is boot from something else.
You can boot from a Windows setup disk
and go through the process of setting up Windows.
As part of that process, you can delete the partitions and or
reformat the partition that you're about to install Windows on.
But the bottom line is you do need to boot from something else.
In that vein, there is a tool that's been around for a very, very long time called
Dban, which stands for Derek's boot and nuke.
What it does is exactly what we want.
It is something you burn to a DVD or install on a USB stick boot from it.
And its job is to erase the hard disks that it finds.
And again, to be clear, it erases the hard disks.
Everything that's on the hard disk will be erased when Dban is done.
Bban is the tool we've been pointing people at for a very,
very long time simply because it's a good general purpose tool.
It will do multiple passes for
government officials because there seems to be some requirements around that.
But for the paranoid as well for you and I, in most cases a single pass is
fine, but if you want more, go for three, go for five.
Heck, go for 35 if you've got the time.
But the bottom line is,
for the most cases, a single pass erase is just fine.
Now, one thing I do need to caution you
about it, and this is something that's changed in recent years.
SSDs are different.
You do not want to run a tool like DBan on an SSD.
It's unclear if in fact a tool like Dban
will and actually erase all the traces of your information.
Fortunately for SSDs, they actually have that ability built in.
The bad news is that right now there's no single tool that comes with Windows or
that you have access to with Windows that will do it for you.
You can.
My first recommendation would be to check
with the manufacturer of that specific SSD.
Many, if not most will have a utility
program for their SSD, and it will include this erase function.
This erase the SSD function.
You can use Windows Disk Manager to remove all the partitions on that SSD.
You haven't really erased everything, but you've at least set a very high
barrier that will make trivial data recovery not so trivial.
And of course, you could use a third party utility.
No, I'm not aware of any free ones right now.
There's one called Partition Magic that seems to get referenced a lot for this specific
task. It includes other tools, of course, but it does include this ATA secure erase.
That is what SSDs will use to erase all the data.
But the important takeaway here is not to use a tool like DBAN,
but rather use an SSD specific tool to erase the information from your SSD.
Now, if you really want to go over the top 35
passes of Dban isn't enough where you just don't trust software.
The other approach and I have in fact done this - physical destruction.
Break the SSD into pieces, drill holes in the magnetic hard drive plotters.
I mean, basically do anything that will
render that media practically unusable for the future.
Now, this does kind of throw a monkey
wrench into the idea of giving your computer, giving the technology to another
source or another place for them to be able to reuse.
Once you've destroyed the hard disk, yeah, thhard disk isn't going to be reused anymore.
The rest of the computer might be, but of course, the first step they're
going to have to do is get a new hard disk.
So my honest recommendation is to use a tool like DBAN on real hard disks.
Use a tool that is specific to your SS.
If you're getting rid of a machine that has an SSD in it and call it good.
Now there's one more question that I
always get with respect to this specific question giving away a machine.
People want to leave Windows on it.
There's really only one way to do that.
And that is to erase the disk.
As we have discussed so far and then
install windows from scratch, there is no way to securely erase
everything that matters except for the operating system.
There's simply no way to know that something important,
something personal, something private hasn't been left behind.
So you really do want to erase the entire
hard disk and then start over from scratch with a fresh install of Windows.
Also, there may be legalities involved,
and this is something that you'll have to look into yourself.
It may not be legal.
It may be against the terms of service
of your Windows purchase or your Windows install.
Actually transfer that install to another person.
Again, that's up to you.
You may have to buy a new copy of Windows.
You may want to have the recipient purchase their own copy of Windows.
Give them a blank hard disk and they can do that.
Or maybe your recipient will want to move
on to something like Linux, which they don't have to pay for.
The point being that you can't just erase everything but the operating system.
You must erase the entire hard disk
and then decide how it's going to be used after that hope that was helpful.
Hope that lets you donate your machine to a worthy cause in a usable and safe way.
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I'm Leo Notenboom.
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