If you are looking to recycle or give away your old computer, you should take care to first remove all personal information from your hard rive to prevent identity theft.
If your computer is still in working order, we recommend a software called Wipe Drive which erases all of the sectors of a hard drive so no traces of data can be found. Also another good tool is Hiren's Boot CD which is a package of troubleshooting utilities, one of which is an Active Kill Disk utility which allows for a complete reformat of your hard drive.
If a Windows based computer is not functional, follow these steps to erase your old hard drive by reformatting the drive:
- Open the computer and remove the hard drive from the non-functioning computer.
- Put the old hard drive into a working computer from which you should have already removed the existing hard drive.
- Next, use software such as Wipe Drive to erase the hard drive but remember to create a bootable CD to boot up this software to completely reformat the hard drive.
- Place the old hard drive into an empty external hard drive casing that has a USB cable and a power cord.
- Connect the back end of the power and USB cable to the back of the external drive then plug the power cord into a surge protector or electrical outlet.
- Connect the USB cable to a working computer.
- Wait for the computer to recognize the hard drive then click on the my computer icon to open it up then right click on the external drive which will probably show up as the E: drive.
- Left click on "Format" in the Windows menu to complete the reformatting of your old hard drive.
New Millennium Computers is also available to assist in erasing your hard drive before discarding or giving it away. Please call us at (212) 851-8426 for more information or to set up an appointment.
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