Consumer Reports: Wiping your old electronics clean

Local abc ^ | 12-24-2013 | Alicia Vitarelli

[Sir Napsalot]

Any other tips added would be helpful, too.

[ransomnote]

bfl

[Justice]

Remove hard disk and roast on open flame bbq one hour.

[darkwing104]

A Thermite Grange works for me

[MortMan]

For my laptops, I remove the hard drive and go target shooting with my 12 gauge...

[Slump Tester]

Yeah, because destroying it and making your computer worth next to nothing makes so much more sense than just deleting the partition and re-creating it.

[ransomnote]

LOL!

[ETL]

And whatever you do, for goodness sake, get rid of the doggy porn!

[uncommonsense]

"Yeah, because destroying it and making your computer worth next to nothing makes so much more sense than just deleting the partition and re-creating it."

There are low level solutions / utilities that can read disk drives even after multiple over-write passes. It takes serious physical damage to subvert recovery.

[Gene Eric]

d-ban is a great utility simply for resurrecting clean partitions.

[Gene Eric]

BTW, as a practical matter, never give away or toss your drives.

[Gene Eric]

You’re assuming the old drives have value.

[Kirkwood]

New drives are very cheap. Your personal information is not.

[eggman]

Don't forget about clearing the navigation/communications systems in your vehicle before you sell it. I bought a used car that had all of the previous owner's addresses and where they had gone with the car. Add in the convenient door opener settings and you could be giving someone a key to your house along with your other personal info.

Read the manual. Most have a simple procedure to reset everything back to the factory settings clearing out all saved data. Don't count on a dealer to do it for you.

[Vendome]

[Still Thinking]

Dr. Thinking’s Low Level Format With Extreme Prejudice: Open hard drive case, remove aluminum or glass platters (the actual disks), run through shredder.

[BunnySlippers]

I took it to the yard and watered it well.

[Vendome]

In order to ensure there are no legacy bread crumbs of your data on a drive you need to Di-mil.

I use a product called “Eraser” and am constantly overwriting old files 7(DoD or Schnier. I mix em up) times and when it comes to give the thing to a needy person I take a dental pick to each bit and byte and then run Guttman(35 passes) over whatever is left.

I’ve tried to use various tools for recovery to ensure I zapped it clean and I haven’t been able to recover a thing after that.

[Vendome]

I do the same thing on cell phones if I give one to a needy person.

I pull everything I want off, clean out any personal Ident’s, load it back up with a couple super large files, run a 7 pass to erase and finally a 35 pass on free storage.

If they can get anything off there then it’s theirs and they are better than me....never...

[Vendome]

I have those instructions for my vehicles in the safe.

When I get rid of a vehicle I wipe it...