Is it safe to donate old computers?

[Timothy]

TAB, You and Tim are naive about this.

You misread my post.  I said NO, DO NOT RECYCLE the hard drive but remove and destroy it.  You can still donate a laptop without the hardrive.

I also said I have two (2) hard drives ready to be incinerated.  I have never NOT removed a drive from a computer.

[tombogan03884]

I meant that just burning, or blasting might not be enough to actually remove the data.
That was why I mentioned the stuff from Iraq. When they got one of Saddam's sons with a missile they had to identify him by DNA because he was just a smear, but they recovered his computers and presumably got info from them.

[jnevis]

Don't buy into all of this, "Reformat with all zeros", stuff.

\

Good enough for the NSA, and they HATE having data available to others.

[TAB]

If you really want to destroy a harddrive  a strong magnetic field fallowed by Turnng it into small pieces is the best bet.


There is a local company that does it while you watch. THey run in thru a magnetic field, then thru a paper shreader on roids and then return the bits too you if you like.


I wonder what a microwave would do to it.  it does cool things to cd/dvds (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-oroNqAbs&feature=related )  I doubt it would destroy all the data, but its got to F things up royally and as a plus its "fun"

[philw]

7 pass  zero of the drive is all that you would need to do



if you are still worried then burn the drive.

[Sponsor]

[PegLeg45]

Phil, that's what I used to do on my drive when deleting data no longer needed. I had a virus software package that had the same overwrite and encryption systems used by the DoD. I always settled for the 7-time pass due to time limits.

When the power supply finally went out I decided to just buy a new machine because the old one was over 5 years old and slow. I yanked the hard drive to keep and gave the chassis away.

IMHO, I wouldn't give away a machine with a hard drive still in it, just to be on the safe side. Too easy to pull them and keep or destroy it.