Remove Sensitive Data Before You Sell An Old Pc

[Peaches]

Remove Sensitive Data Before You Sell an Old PC

Lincoln Spector

Brian Ellis wants to know the best way to secure an old PC for a new owner.

"Anyone with a cheap data recovery program can recover your recently deleted files--even if you've emptied the recycle bin. They can also get files off a freshly-formatted hard drive. So if you want to be absolutely certain that your old PC's new owner won't get your private information, you need to wipe the sensitive files by overwriting them with new 1s and 0s.

Before you pick a program, you need to answer two questions: Do you want to wipe the sensitive data or the whole drive? And how paranoid are you?

Wiping just the sensitive files is faster, but it requires more thought on your part, and leaves open the possibility of a mistake. It also requires you to wipe the unused space on your drive, which may contain remnants of older versions of your sensitive files.

But wiping the entire drive has its own problems. A Windows computer is supposed to go to new owners with the operating system intact. If your PC came with a recovery disc, and you haven't lost it, that's not a big problem--you can wipe the drive, then reinstall Windows. But if your PC can reinstall Windows without a special CD or DVD, wiping the entire drive will effectively destroy the Windows license that came with it. Even wiping the C: partition and leaving the recovery partition alone might render recovery impossible."

full story at PCLWorld - http://www.pcworld.com/article/165771/remo..._an_old_pc.html