Selling your ID
You want to sell or donate your old PC, make sure it's clean.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
BY : Brian Ashe
Well, its been three years since you got the old workhorse. Now you've decided to get a brand new computer with all the latest bells and whistles. This one is quick, slick and capable. With that big tax refund you just got it won't hurt the budget too bad either.
So you've gotten all your e-mails, pictures, music files and documents copied over and relegated the old system to the corner of the room. It seems such a waste to just leave it sitting there collecting dust. It's not like it was useless. It just didn't seem to really do everything you can now with your shiny new box. Someone could still use it. So what should you do? Throwing it away just doesn't seem like an option. Hey, maybe it's still worth a few bucks and you can get a new scanner or something. Maybe the charity down the street can put it to good use.
Well, don't just list it on your favorite auction site yet or throw it in the trunk to get it over to that charity. It still has three years of your life on it. It has your tax files, check book, saved passwords, browser cookies, e-mails and more still on it. The last thing you need to do is pass all that information along to the new owner. They may be honest and just install over it or they may just be a little curious and do a quick check if there are any juicy e-mails or pictures on there first. You can't count on that.
It could take days to properly delete all of that stuff. Can you really remember where everything was saved? Can you even remember what might have been saved? Computers are great at making files. It can put stuff in places you never see or think about like temporary files.
A friend of yours is pretty good with computers. So you decide to ask him what you can do to wipe the drive clean before you get rid of it. Since he is rebuilding computers all the time, he tells you that all you have to do is use the fdisk and format commands from a boot floppy. Sounds simple enough. You go home and follow his instructions completely. It must have worked, you can't even get the machine to boot now.
Too bad it isn't enough to even slow someone down from getting all your stuff back. Those commands are for "starting fresh". They don't actually erase anything from the harddrive. All they do is tell the computer to ignore it and look somewhere else. They require only a small investment in some very common software to restore all of your data. They were originally created for "accidental deletion" recovery. Now they are a simple tool for someone interested in getting your life off your old computer.
Don't worry, you still have some options. You don't have to send your PC out into the world hoping that your information won't be used illicitly. No need to take the harddrive out and erase it with your favorite hammer either. There are some commercial and free programs that can "wipe" your drives clean.
WARNING : Use of tools mentioned below needs to be done carefully. You will not be able to recover lost data or software if you make a mistake.
The commercial options are probably the ones that can make recovery absolutely impossible. However, if you are going to be selling your computer, it can cut into any return you were hoping to get from its sale. Worse, if you are giving it away, it will actually cost you money to do so. If you are truly paranoid (no problem with that) or have really sensitive data on your drive, it may be your best choice. However, some of the commercial products actually bundle the free programs with other tools. You can easily search the Web for some of these products.
A more practical approach is to use one of the free programs available on the Web. For example there are some free products that make use of the Linux operating system and can be put on a floppy disk or CD-ROM. You can then boot the computer from the disk you made and perform the erasure. They are a little cryptic, but highly effective. You can download and use them without any cost to you which makes them very appealing for this type of situation. A couple options are Autoclave and Darik's Boot and Nuke. So make sure you check them out if you are about to get rid of that old PC.
All of the above are quite capable of making it near impossible for anyone to recover the data on the drive. There are some very advanced and equally expensive methods of recovery, but they are near impossible to do without laboratories and PhDs working for hours on it. You won't likely need to worry about anyone doing that to your old PC.
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