How does one wipe their hardrive clean before donating computer to

charity? Is there someway I can do this myself or do I have to hire someone? Thanks if anyone can help.

?

If so let me know.

supposedly will return your computer to it's orginal state...but I don't know if that wipes off all my files and e-mails,too.

It used to be (on older computers) you could restart in the DOS mode.

If you can get into DOS the commands are simple:

1. type in when you see the prompt that appears cd c:
2. when you see c:// as the prompt type in format c:/u

That wipes it CLEAN. NOTHING. EVERYTHING WILL BE GONE FOR CERTAIN.

Maybe your computer has DOS on it most likely. Do a search on it to see in the help files if you have them.

It reformats/wipes it all clean in a short time (like >1/2 hr.).

Good luck.

:kick:

a good option since I don't have enough ram to download free programs or install any purchased programs to wipe it clean.

Thanks! :-)s

it will ask you a question - something like do you want to really do this or something to that effect. click on YES when you see it. Then the process will start up.

On edit: When it is finished you will see the c:// prompt again. At this point I'd say try typing in exit. If that doesn't exit you from DOS, just turn the machine off and attempt to reboot.

In any event, it will definitely get rid of everything

Few people know MS DOS anymore but I do. I took a class in it almost 20 years ago and I still remember the basic commands luckily.

:)

The dos format /u command just means unformat information is not retained- after such an operation I can still pull the hard drive and do a file recovery on it and recover every single file that you think you just wiped.

You need a drive SCRUBBER, which not only wipes the files but overwrites the complete hard drive to your specifications- from three passes to thirth five passes, finishing with a pass of all zeros.

Here is a floppy-based utility that works quite nicely, and is not expensive. I've tested it against several file recovery programs and it passes the test on all of them. http://www.iolo.com/ds/

There are also more expensive windows-based programs I've also started using such as Acronis, and I believe there may be some Linux/Unix based ones as well.

Remember, FORMATTING a hard drive DOES NOT DESTROY THE DATA ON IT.

Diskwipers are the best way to go.

First delete all the folders that aren't system folders. Then run Quick Restore. Now load on software. Make multiple copies to fill the disk as much as you can. Now run quick restore again. Repeat the cycle one more time.

It won't be clean, but it will be much cleaner.

The 'dead' hard drive has data on it, and this won't do anything to address that.

They usually just write random data to the tune of 100 or so times and it usually scrambles it pretty well.

Eraser on the drive, then a clean format and install of a Linux Distro.

There is also a program out ther called "Killdisk" that hacker types like. I have never used it.

to run a program that I have to buy... One hardrive is dead and the other only has 16 megabytes but that's the one that has lots of political stuff and articles about Bush, e-mails,personal finance stuff.

On Edit: One machine's hard drive is shot, and the other machine only has 16 bytes of Ram. Should I just take out the hardrives and destroy them since I can't really run any freeware programs or purchased programs on either of them. :shrug:

But I very much doubt you only have 16 mb of RAM. If that's the problem, and you're gonna wipe the drive anyway, just delete a bunch of shit so that you can load the Erase program. That will free up the space on your hard drive to load the program.

:)

just set the options to one pass or it will take forever.

:)

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

get it working to get a free program. Other computer is very old and doesn't have enough memory to be able to download anything. I'm not sure if anyone would be able to get anything off the dead hardrive and the other one has lots of Bush files and political stuff but being it only has 16 MB of Ram..would anyone even bother?

Maybe I shouldn't worry wiping them clean? Or should I try to take out the hardrives and just destroy them. Is that hard to do?

so you could put it on a floppy... LOL if you have one and boot from the floppy...

...that is, to make it near impossible to retrieve what was once written, you need to do more than erase, format and fdisk. The entire hard drive has to be overwritten to destroy every bit of data.

Any of these freeware programs (for Windows) will do the trick:

Active@Kill Disk
Darik's Boot & Nuke
Eraser
Sure Delete

I found them on the Rutgers data security site. This is the minimum they require.

leave an OS on it for the people you give it to?

It might be easier and safer to just grab a cheap drive somewhere and pop it in before donating, keeping the old drive with all your data if they don't need an OS. I've got five drives sitting around with lots of old software and data I haven't bothered to move yet, but might need to sometime.

I am not entirely convinced that EVERY bit of personal data can be erased from a drive while leaving Windows on it. There are lists of recently used programs and files, passwords, caches, and all sorts of other stuff hidden all over the place, often encrypted but still there for anyone who knows how to find them. The registry alone could have thousands of hints of what you've been doing, and I haven't found a registry cleaner yet that gets them all.

However, that's for the truly paranoid. If you haven't been doing anything you would be embarassed about, a good cleaning up of your files, registry pruning, and overwriting the empty parts of the drive should work. (You just never know who might be looking at that drive in the not so distant future.)

keep it? Anyone who wants to use the computers would need to put a bigger hard drive in the box anyway because one drive has only 16 bytes of ram and the other 128 so they are pretty outdated for today's users. The boxes could be used to rebuild a computer, though.

I can't see anyone wanting Win95 which is on both computers..as an OS :shrug: Is there any danger with opening the boxes and finding the drives?

I think they are in slots...right?

work on my computer I do a search (I use yahoo) and enter the type, model number of my computer and then what I would like to do. ie Compaq Presario 2500US remove hard drive. Lots of people love to give that kind of advice.

assume removing it from one would be the same as for the other..

I'll tell ya how.

in place, though. Reading another posters reply it sounds like alot of work getting one out that isn't soldered in place so having it soldered would be impossible. Compaq was criticized on their cheap early machines for not having parts that could be upgraded or change... I might be out of luck on trying to take the drives out.

no way. there would be no reason to do it, and every reason not to. open up the machine and check it out.

I think you're confusing hard drives with RAM memory. And, yeah, nobody wants Win95.

Pull the plug from the machine before opening it because just turning it off with the switch may not actually turn off all the power to the machine (I blew up a motherboard making that mistake).

When you open it, you'll see stuff like memory, modem, maybe network card, sound card and some other stuff in the slots. Ignore them unless they're in the way. You'll see several large, flat ribbon cables going to disk drives. Follow the biggest one to the hard drive and disconnect it and the four prong power cable from the drive, if possible at this point. Then the fun starts because you have to figure out how to get the damn thing out from under where it's hidden. If you're lucky, it might just sort of slide out but there might be all sorts of screws and connecting stuff to deal with. Often, there are little pictures in the case to help figure it out. Every one is a little different, so I can't help any more than that without looking at the thing. It's usually easier to do than to explain, though.

You might be able to put the old drive in your new machine as a second drive, if there's room in there. With luck, there should be a ribbon cable with two connectors on it (with the one on the end connected to your hard drive) a spare power connector, and a spare drive bay. There's something called a "jumper" on the back of the drive that has to be set to "slave" (should be instructions on the drive) hook it all up using the second ribbon connector and you've got another hard drive you can use for storage or backup. You can safely delete all the crap you don't use off this "new" drive.

Just don't forget to unplug the new computer before opening it.

is a 2000. I was confusing the Memory with the hard drive. Figured I could just pop something out of a slot. I also think the old one had a hard drive that was soldered in because one of the critcisms of Compaq was that you couldn't change the parts. :-( I might be out of luck taking the hard drives out then and will have to use the "floppy" method mentioned abover since I don't have enough memory on either one to download from the internet.

Thanks though...glad I read this before I got my screwdriver out and went to work. ;-)

Nothing is "soldered in place," believe me. The criticism of changing parts probably has to do with compatibility with the motherboard, and probably only refers to the CPU chip. It has nothing to do with anything being soldered in place, and nobody would ever do that to a hard drive under any circumstances.

Turn off the machine and take everything that plugs into it.
AFTER it's unplugged, hit the power button on and off to discharge it.
Open up the machine.
Touch something metal to discharge yourself.
Find the IDE cable. It looks like this:



One end plugs into the motherboard (that square circuit board thing that has everything attached to it). The other plugs into your hard drive. You may also have one of these things connecting the CD player to the motherboard. Look to see what it's connecting. THIS ISN'T HARD. Refer to this page for more:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph03429&product=89327&dlc=en&lang=en

on in a long while. So, do I still need to worry about the "static?"

On one the hard drive was gone...crashed. The '96 one's hard drive is okay but I haven't used the machine in several years. It's has "SIMMS Ram" and not DIMMS" (don't laugh if I screwed it up...I was a newbie and when I bought my first Compaq (:loveya:) I have a great love for my first Compaq because it had JBL Speakers and allowed me (clueless) to get on the internet and THRIVE...opening up a whole new world to this "math compromised person..even though most DU'ers and EVERYONE hates Compaq)I read later that SIMMS was not upgradable because everyone had gone to DIMMS. I don't know what either term means...because I'm not a Computer Savvy person about that stuff...but I'm pretty mechanical and can take most things apart and fix them and have an "intuitive thing" with computers in that I'm not afraid of them.

But...one Computer has "SIMMS" thing (the oldest)...and that one still works with 16 bytes or whatever of Ram or whatever you call it. The other one's hard drive died and so I wonder why any person would be able to get anything off it that was useable. Still that computer has much anti-Bush stuff and financial files/business files so I really would like to destroy it.

The memory (SIMM, DIMM, whatever) is irrelevant to what we're doing here. A hard drive is a storage device, and has nothing to do with the memory modules (OK, hard drives can have page files installed that work as virtual memory, but that's neither here nor there). The hard drive is completely separate from the memory.

Don't worry too much about the static discharge. Just put your hand on a piece of grounded metal before you work in the case. It doesn't really matter whether the computer has been on or off. Go through the procedure anyway, if you're worried about damaging the motherboard (it's YOUR electricity that's the issue, not the machine's).

The whole job should take no longer than 20 minutes. Good luck!

your graphic gives a "picture memory" in my brain to go along with the very good instructions from another poster about what to look for where my hard drive is.

Hardrive I still think is soldered but I won't know until I get there this weekend. But the BIG flat cable is a clue in to what I'm looking for.

Thanks...:-)'s

I assure you of that. It will be fastened with screws, and that's it. It would never cross anybody's mind to solder a hard drive to a case, ever.

Cheers. ;-)

didn't allow "interchanges." And most DU'ers at that time..long ago when I joined though Compaq was such a "piece of crap" they wouldn't deal with it.

But,as I said, for those of us Newbies to Computer World they gave us "built in software" that allowed the more "mechanical" of us to get online and they (in the beginning had a GREAT Help site with savvy technicians that I spent literally hours on the phone with answering my probably in today's terms "Idiotic" questions about how to turn on your computer when it's given you a screen with "gibberish" and gone blank.

Many of us who are here today on the liberal Internets got here because we bought a computer with "modified Windows installed" with lots of HELP from 1-800 Number FREE or ONLINE COMPAQ help which was actually very well written for folks who were "Math/Dos Challenged."

It's just my "personal view" but I think there are many of us out there who got our "sea legs" or first "clue in" from computers whose "business model" was to give us lots of help to get us "clued into the Globalist/Monetary/Consumer THING of the INTERNET. Whatever the reason for their HELP when it was FREE...I took advantage of it..they really helped ME!

I have no beef with HP or Compaq (Compaq is HP's lower-end line, like Old Navy is to Gap). Their support remains excellent. My HP notebook burned out in warranty, and their support guy walked me through a bunch of preliminaries, then had me Fed Ex it into them, no cost. They had it back with a new motherboard in 3 days. I was impressed, to say the least. It's been groovy since. I know hardware stuff is scary, but it's least scary in situation like yours, where you really aren't too concerned with the health or status of the machine. I learned how to play with computer hardware on an old machine that I didn't really use anymore, and it's helped me tremendously on my regular desktop, which I now upgrade and tweak without fear. You have an opportunity here to get more savvy, and I'd take it.

That said, there's still not a chance in hell your hard drive is soldered to anything. The interchangability issue probably has to do with the physical size of the hard drive when they were moving to smaller standards, so tecxhies complained that the Compaq's still came with the larger sized drives when the industry standard was moving to smaller drives.

I got it.......

some help too when they have to clean out their garage or attic but are afraid because their Hardrive contains too much personal.

I don't know if "old computers" can help kids or folks anywhere...but I come from the "Use it up, wear it out, make do Generation." So, to just "ditch my oldie friend computers in a Landfill kind of goes against my beliefs.

Maybe someone can use the "box" to rebuild or build a computer for someone. Maybe the metal in the box should be recycled so that we don't dig more mines that deface our landscape. Or, maybe no one cares and my oldie computers will end up in Landfill anyway...but I got enough info on this post/thread to be able to make a sound decision...and I thank you all for all the advice. I don't mind trying and working through your suggestions because I just can't stand to throw my old computers (that gave this clueless person so much joy and allowed me to be here to fight against Bushistas) in a dump or by the roadside like they are "roadkill."

I treasured my Compaqs with the JBL SPEAKERS with supreme sound and I hope someone out there can find a way to fix them up and allow others to "get online," in some way.

THANKS ALL! :loveya: I've got photo's, directions, links to freeware and suggestions from all of you..and this weekend I will break out my "floppies, screwdrivers and whatever" and just "go at it."

as A_M and maybe others have said, it's not soldered in.

I had a Compaq that drove me crazy because of all the proprietary parts and wierd things it did, but pulling the drive was easy-- just like any other computer. I still have that drive as a "spare" because, of all the components, hard drives are among the most standardized things in there and are easy to swap between computers.

Even if you don't plan on putting the drives into a new computer any time soon, they don't go bad so you can just put them on a shelf somewhere. There is, by the way, a gadget I picked up at CompUSA for about 25 bucks that lets you plug a hard drive into it and then you plug the gadget into a USB port and it acts just like any other drive, although slower. Very useful for backups if you have some hard drives lying around on a shelf.

I think you are funning me..because I sound so clueless. Or, maybe you are serious but are WAYYYYYY beyond me in skills.

It'll just work like an external hard drive. The hard part is translating the IDE connection to a USB or firewire connection. Once you have that done, and you can get power to the drive, it's easy.

Easiest way is with this thing called a "Mobile Hard Drive" I got at CompUSA. You plug the drive into the plastic box then connect the box to a USB port and you got an instant extra drive.

That's because it can't be.

For the truly paranoid and technically inclined, there's the "Russian Reformat."

My partner works with highly secure data for a living. He works out of the house (I think we're up to 15 servers in the garage at the moment). Anyway, there are really just two ways to INSURE that nobody can retrieve the information on a hard-drive. One way several people have already mentioned - a multi-pass write and erase on the full drive. The DOD spec for a 'clean' drive is 7 passes. The NSA spec is 35 passes. Either one takes FOREVER. Option number two - and this is the one we use - is to take the hardrive out of the machine and drill holes into it. Three or four holes outta do it. This ruins the drive, so you wouldn't be able to give it to anyone, but drives are cheap and old ones fail anyway.

Hope this helps. :hi:

Removing the drives might work best because they are both so old. I was thinking of bending the hard drives to disable them...but I do own a drill. :D

:hi:

Unless you have a huge press, I can't see that happening though. :)

the drives were big and there was a lot of space between the "tracks"... IMHO geek opinion, 1 pass today is enough two or three is more than enough.

erase and the others ALSO change the name of the file they are erasing. Some do not. So even if you erase the file "Sex with my Donkey.jpg" if the name is still there that will tell somebody something.....

Or on your work machine to have a deleted/erase file named Resume.doc........

As far as we were aware, this was still the spec. :hi:

That's just for bleaching temp files, slack space and the like, too.

just the spec was written for 8Meg 60's disk drives... :rofl: :hi:

"One" certainly isn't close to being enough to satisfy paranoia.

In a realistic enviroment you are correct. Sadly there's no way to do that with windows - even a format /u doesn't come close.
A Unix/Linux "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<harddisk> bs=64k" is what I would do. Maybe twice, with other data written in between.

that will "shred" the drive that becomes the equivalent of the 7 pass rewrite and wipe out.

Or you can just take the hard drive out and donate the rest of the computer.

Or re format it like people are saying. Or do that a number of times.

And intersperse adding new files in between.

If you have any stuff that would make you vulnerable to identity theft, ie your soc sec number or any credit card info or access to financial info, if I were you I'd be sure to either use the high security 7 pass method. Or I'd take the hard drive out.

the 7 pass spec is from the 60s. One pass today is really enough, two if you are a belt and spenders person.

me to have an opinion.

Excuse me.

B-)

A win95/98/2000 CD?

had the software installed so the "Quick Restore" disk was given so that you could reinstall the Windows and Compaq stuff if your machine crashed.

I have both the Quick Restores for each model but that's it. I installed my Norton and other stuff from purchased copies but the Windows OS was on the Compaq disk.

(I was a Newbie and needed all the help I could get to learn a computer)

It sounds like these are ancient machines and will go to the recycle bin in any case. It's really easy to remove the drives, remove the power supplies and it's four small screws, nothing to it really.

but be sure to wear rubber gloves

and do not accidentally spill any ammonia while you work with the clorox.

glad I could help.

An enthusiastic hammer-bashing on concrete worked just fine for me.


:7

'UltraShredder deletes sensitive files by overwriting them with random characters, saving it to disk each time, and then bypasses the recycle bin, thus acting as your personal, portable file shredder. If the file were to be recovered by a data recovery program, they would only be able to see unintelligible characters on disk where the file used to be. The program is a great tool to destroy sensitive data, and is very small with a minute memory footprint, and makes no changes to your system whatsoever.'

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_95_9519.html

:D...if all else fails get the sledge and go at it.......

I don't understand...

:shrug: I thought you were being "ironic."

n/t

If I wanted to be ironic, I'd use one of these:



PS, yes, that is a photo from Darth Vader's new line of small appliances. Ever since mentally strangling George Foreman, he's cornered the market.

Hitachi wrote it.

Drive Fitness Test (DFT)

It only works with IBM and Hitachi drives.

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Good for notebooks, as most notebook drives are IBM or Hitachi.

Seriously.

If you had any sort of private information on that hard drive at any time, you take out the hard drive, kill it -- with prejudice -- and donate the rest. Make a day of it.

You *can* securely wipe a hard drive to the point that no one without the resources of some organization like the NSA could retrieve any valuable information. The problem is that it is far too easy to accidentally miss something, like a Windoze swapfile. As an extreme example, I've played with completely encrypted drives that had unencrypted swap partitions containing data with clear text passwords.

way to go on this. Even though my hard drives are old and one is crashed and the other is okay...I think trying to get them out if they aren't soldered in...and then smashing them up or scratching them up as to be unusable would give me peace of mind.

If I can't get them out then I'll use the "floppy disk" route with free download and try to erase it plus using my Compaq Quick Restore which supposedly wipes off everything but original OS.

Good tips here, from everyone ...and Thanks to all...:-)'s