Cleaning Hard Drives

[paddywak]

A friend of mine who runs a small scrap/salvage firm has recently acquired a mixed load of about three dozen old computers.Some are obviously just fit for scrap,but some can be cleaned up and sold on.The trouble is we are a bit worried as we don't know the histories of these units and don't want to pass anything on which may contain any personal details or items of "dubious" nature.Are there any programs out there that can clear the drives? Preferably some thing fairly idiot proof as neither of us are really computer literate

[boxtops]

Personally, I'd hit it with a large hammer to destroy the HD, then whoever buys them can install a new hard drive. That's what we've done every time we get rid of a computer tower.

[Hypognosis]

Reformatting the drive wipes off all the data.

The trouble there is that it also wipes off the operating system and you need the operating system resident on the disk (or, to be precise, it has to be on the bootable partition) so as to run the drive utility which does the formatting.

A setup where you have one HDD with Windoze on it and you plug in the drive you want to format as the slave unit would work. Up to a point...

Windows XP detects 'significant hardware changes' and you have to reactivate it each time. You are only allowed about half a dozen reactivations before they make your copy of Windows unusable.

This answer is necessarily incomplete and imperfect. See what others add.

[Old_Geezer]

I don't recall names off the top of my head but do a web search. There are programmes out there that will overwrite the whole disk many times over with random data making it near impossible to get the original stuff back off.

[paddywak]

Thanks for your replies we'll do a bit more research and if we can't find an easier way we'll resort to hammering the hard drive and doing what we can with the rest.

[fbg40]

Just googled this - http://eraser.heidi.ie/
Could this be what you are looking for ?
Good luck.
FBG40

[paddywak]

Thanks for that fbg we'll give it a go and see what happens

[VHG]

>>>Reformatting the drive wipes off all the data.

Not totally true

Some formats, such as a "Quick Format" (available in Windows) does NOT delete all the files, only the pointers TO the files, the files can remain, even deleted ones.

Even after a full format data can still be recovered with specialist tools.

[VHG]

If you want to keep the operating system on it and the various programs then download CCleaner (for free)

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Then do a basic "Run Cleaner" (press the Run Cleaner button) first against Windows then against Applications. This will get rid of a lot of the "dross".

Then still within CCleaner, within the Tools section, run Drive Wiper and choose the option "free space".

This will wipe out anything on the free space (empty space) on the disk, but leave all the other files like Windows and programs.

If you want to do a complete wipe of the disk then run DBan (Dariks Boot and Nuke).

http://www.dban.org/

You need to create a boot CD and boot the computer from that and run the program.

However as has been said, this will wipe EVERYTHING off the disk so you will need to reinstall Windows and any programs which could be a pain if you need to locate and install new Windows software.

You could sell them with "empty" disks but it may be that the software on them (Windows and perhaps Office) is worth more than the hardware.

[Hypognosis]

One other aspect - unless you have the patience to go Googling the Make/Model numbers, to look up the year of release, you have no way of knowing how old these HDDs are, that is to say how many years your buyers can reasonably expect before they go phut.

Personally, I would rather spend 50 quid on a HDD I know I can expect 5+ years trouble free use than gamble 15 quid on a s/h drive which is likely to be closer to 10 years old (inferred from disposed-of computer) than 5.

If the hardware in these machines isn't good enough to support Win7 or higher (XP support is being withdrawn soon) then sell them as empty cases and spare parts.

[paddywak]

Once again thank you everybody.The things came out of a unit my mate was asked to clear and I'm beginning to think it will be easier to strip them down,sell any bits we can and bin the rest

[galeck1947]

Don't even go there take to the computer recyclers who will dispose of the correctly in accordance with the electronic recycle codes set by the government. Don't even try to clean them up they are old technology and not worth the effort that's why they are there.