Passing on computers

What do I need to do (and how) to my old computer before giving it away? It is slow and so I am purchasing another but know that someone can use this one.

 

I would wipe the hard drive. To do this I would suggest a program called Darik's boot and nuke.

 

Wiping the hard drive to remove personal data is about all you need to do really.

 

I have given some older PCs away before, but I just remove all Documents, programs, pictures, etc that the other person won't need.
Strip it down to Windows only. Then get all updates installed ( if feeling generous).
I then run DiskRedactor, which writes over the unused space on the hard drive to ensure no personal stuff can be recovered easily.

 

I'd wipe the entire drive and then use dban as mentioned above. Don't even leave the OS. You can reinstall it after.

Take it from someone who does data recovery as a part-time hobby. Wiping free space will not stop me from recovering your data.

 

Im with Adrynalyne on this, wipe the drive completely!

I suggest getting the UBCD http://majorgeeks.com/Ultimate_Boot_CD_For_Windows_d4981.html

Amongst other things it has a few Disk wiping facilities, if your wearing your tin foil hat and feeling really paranoid it has a 35-PASS wiping algo' no one is recovering anything after that
I believe it also has a 7-PASS, a 3-PASS and a 1-PASS method aswell.



Q

 

I know there are two schools of thought here, and both have merit...

If you have or have had sensitive data on your machine, then yes, by all means, wipe everything out using the erasing suggestions above...

On the other hand, if you've never used the computer for anything other than the basics, feel that you have nothing to hide, and are feeling generous, then hrlow2's route makes sense...I've done the same over the years: donations to churches and nursing homes are always welcome in my area, and as most of these institutions are running on the bare minimum, finance-wise, I have no qualms about leaving the computer with a running operating system...

 

Combination of both: If you have an XP disc and serial, or the recovery disc for your PC (please note not a recovery partition on the HDD) then wipe and nuke it, then reinstall XP and update etc.

 

Step 1) completely format it (you can use any of the programs listed above, or gparted live cd http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ )
Step 2) mail it to me!

 

Thank you everyone, I use it for school and to pay bills and for emails. Shouldnt be too much privacy but I dont want anything there just in case.
Thanks -

 

Paying bills on the computer is enough to warrant nuking it, in my opinion. You don't know what kind of credit/debit card information is lurking on "deleted" areas of the hard drive, i.e. areas that have held files that have now been deleted.