Prepping Your Computer for Disposal

If you wipe your hard drive PROPERLY, you don’t need to do anything else.  No uninstalling programs, no deleting files, no formatting.  Nothing.

If you DON’T wipe it PROPERLY, you might as well not bother will all those other things because they won’t do any good, anyway.

Probably the best tool for wiping a hard drive is DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke).  This is freeware, and wipes a hard drive to DoD specifications.  (Just do a search on DBAN and you’ll find it.)

Use with caution!  It WILL wipe every hard drive on the machine.  That’s what it’s designed to do. 

Plug it into your CD or DVD drive, boot the machine, and it nukes all the hard drives.

Boot and nuke.  Simple.  Effective.  Efficient.

I tell people to pull the drive then donate or recycle the rest.  New drives are inexpensive and often faster than the old one.

Yes, the DOD & NSA certify software for secure erasure.  The dirty little secret is they don’t use the them.  Most government agencies have on site hard drive shredders.  For my part, I’ve built a quiet little business destroying hard drives.  Send me your hard drive & $10.  The drive goes to my firing range for 6 holes through the drive.  Afterwards, the remains are recycled like any other now inert chunk of metal.  Know what you’re doing if you try this yourself.  Hard drives are amazing bullet resistant.

There’s a banking commercial on TV that shows a man pondering whether to accept a bank’s ATM fees, while all these people throughout the commercial tell him ‘It’s what they do, accept it’ in a multitude of ways. Perhaps you’ve seen it (if not, you can go here to watch it: http://bit.ly/rpEK2n).

It’s worth noting because our online lives aren’t much different. There is a way things are done online. You ‘accept it’ or you don’t play, and you know you want to be included… especially when everyone you know, to include your dad, your little sister, even your pet chihuahua, has a Facebook account, posts their thoughts via Twitter, posts their pics to a Flickr account, and shows off their recent antics via YouTube…. you have to wonder if unplugging from the grid is worth it. After all, the internet is how we share our lives today. You don’t want to be left out now, do you?

Think about it… when’s the last time you pulled out a genuine photo album to share pics of little Johnny or Jenny with your mom? But I’m sure she checks out photos of her grandkids via Facebook or Flickr.

It used to be the only time you knew what Uncle Bob was doing was at Christmas time when he sent out his annual holiday letter. Now you can know what he’s up to all year if you want.

Same thing when it comes to Amazon wishlists, and similar lists. If your family checks them, it may be there only way to know WTH you want for Christmas when they’re unsure what to get someone who’s nearly 40 with a wife & kids.

I could go on & on with the examples, but suffice to say, unless you care to unplug from the grid and crawl into a cave (and even there, you’re not immune… even Osama bin Laden had internet you’re probably not going to escape the ‘new norm.’

Privacy is dead. At this point all you can control is how much privacy do you sacrifice.

Personally, when I used that pipl.com link provided above, I didn’t find but three places any info about me was listed: Amazon, Facebook and Flickr. And even on those sites I’ve got next to no public information listed on them that I wouldn’t share with you myself.

So you can do as I do, and intentionally limit the info you share using the tools listed in this article (good job btw, Christina) or you can go crazy thinking about all the ways Big Brother has invaded your life. Fact of the matter is, He’s here to stay. How you manage His arrival is up to you.

You wouldn’t believe how many people drop off computers for recycling without even asking about what happens to their data.  Luckily, we are an honest company and make sure everything is wiped properly, but I’m sure that is the exception not the rule.  I seem to remember several people getting busted for buying used drives on Ebay or in thrift stores then combing the drives for personal information they could use for identity theft.  Play it safe and wipe everything.

Preparing your computer for disposal it’s a very important aspect, however few people take this seriously. Before wiping out all your files, you can use the IBM I modernization to transfer them into another computer or device, for later use. Once this step completed, your computer is ready to be disposed or donated.

Although not many people think about it, preparing a computer for disposal or donation is a very important step, especially if the computer is used for business purposes. Nothing can replace a computer, but adding the Houston business phone will definitely help you expand your business faster, so it’s worth considering, don’t you think?