How to 100% purge/clean hard drive?
 

I will soon be getting my new desk top. After I transfer all my files/programs to the new one, I would like to delete everything from the old one's hard drive. I have heard that a hard drive cannot be 100% cleaned.

Is this true? What do you recommend....other than drilling holes in the old hard drive.

btk

I purchased a disk caddy and took the drive out of my old PC and use it as an external drive for backup with my new PC.

Go to download.com They have free or very inexpensive software for all sorts of programs. I'm sure you can find something there that can accomplish what you want. Zs suggestion is a good one. I have two such drives....

Run a heavy duty magnet over the drive, it will trash it!

You can reformat the disk if your program will allow. Breaking the disk is probably the safest method.

Saltwater will do it, years ago tried a magnet didn't work.

I would toss it, new ones R so cheap now.

I already have a remote hard drive. Even the pro type stuff seem to qualify just how clean is clean. Starting to look like rifle and pistol target practice.....coming up!

btk

Using it as a back-up is a good idea if your so inclined.

A couple of whacks with a hammer will trash the old one if you want to ensure it will not be used again.

Deleting/reformating only lays a new layer of oxide over the old data...the old data still exists and can be read with easy to obtain software. To totally secure this data you have some choices....get the hard drive near a very large and powerful magnet (and that's kinda iffy) or drill out the hard drive (a whole bunch of holes) anbd then soak in a bucket of saltwater or chemical corrosive. Of course you can just hide it in plan sight with the lable "Little Bobby's Bar Mitzva"...who the hell would wanna access that? Cheers!

Eraser.net has a program that will overwrite your hard drive multiple times so your original data can never be accessed. I've used it before and it seems to work well (and slowly).

Trust me it can be read....I did this for a living. You either have to scramble all the layers of oxide (and even then you can get some data) or physically destroy the disc. Multiple layers of oxide might make recovery harder and could complicate efforts...but, good techs will recover enough.

Your absolutely correct, a forensic guy can get the data.

Toss it if U have sensitive data.

As the copiers at staples and office depot have hard drives anything you have copied is on them.Tax returns and etc. set the disk away in a few years no one will care to read your disk.

Forensic guys can get data from computers that have experienced water or fire damage. My suggestion call don vito and he will send you a cleaner:D

If you can't spin the disc over readers without damage to the readers (because the disc was drilled with a slow drill) makes it harder and costlier to obtain data...also, saltwater and/or corrosive chemicals further limits data recovery. Of course, if NSA believes your data to be a national security issue then cost and difficulty do not factor in and they will recover the littlest bits of data and turn it over to the FBI who has experts who can make sense of the smallest amount of raw intelligence. That said...labeling the disc - "Little Bobby's Bar Mitzva" will likely curtail their efforts.