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How to Erase Your Hard Drive

Sooner or later, every PC user is faced with a decision: what to do with his or her old computer after purchasing a new one. If you're in that position, you have a few choices. You could donate the old computer, as long as it's still in working condition, to a school, charity, or library. You could try selling the old computer. Or you could simply toss it.

Regardless of how you decide to dispose of the old PC, however, don't forget that once it's out of your possession, you have no control over what happens to the data remaining on its hard drive. With identity theft a soaring problem, the chances that someone would be interested in getting your old computer simply to scrape your personal data from its hard drive are probably much higher than you realize.

You may think that there is really not anything on your hard drive that would matter anyone else, what are you sure you've never entered a credit card or bank account number, your medical information, or any other personal details which you would prefer remain private?

To be entirely safe, you should always wipe its hard drive clean before disposing of an old PC. Here are five of the most common ways of doing just that:

• File and Folder Deletion

You can begin cleaning your hard drive simply by selecting and deleting all your files and folders, and then going into your Recycle Bin and emptying it. Doing this is not terribly effective, however, because while your operating system will no longer be able to detect deleted files, because the file pointer itself has been deleted, the file pointer and the data in those files will still be present on the hard drive. Anyone with the right data recovery software will be able to recover those files without much effort.

• Reformatting Your Hard Drive

If you want to actually delete all the files on your hard drive, simply reformatting the drive will destroy the structure of the file data. But the data will still remain in a reformatted condition, and anyone with the skills to do so can restore and recover that information

• Electronic Degaussing

The degaussing process uses an electronic magnet to reverse the magnetic field in a race any contents contained in the magnetic media on your hard drive.

• Data Overwriting

While overwriting your hard drive data is one way of disguising it, it's generally not considered as safe as wiping the data clean. You wouldn't be entirely certain that you had overwritten 100% of the files on your hard drive, so there could still be a chance of someone accessing your personal information.

• Hard Drive Destruction

While it may be an extreme measure, destroing your hard drive is the one way you can be absolutely certain your data remains safe. It does, however, eliminate the possibility of your PC's being useful to anyone else.

Data Wiping Software

While many people use one or more of the above methods to clean their hard drives, none of them except hard drive destruction is a guarantee that personal information on the drive will be available to snooping eyes. With data wiping software, however, you'll have no more worries that any traces of your private data remain in any kind of storage media. While the software performs some very complicated operations in removing your data, actually using the software is quite simple.

Your data wiping software will begin by substituting random arrangements of ones and zeros for your hard drive data, and then changing the arrangement until the entire disk is covered with a distribution of ones and zeros. Doing this will entirely remove everything from your system, including your registry data, Windows logs, and administrative data. Anything on your hard drive which could have revealed anything about you will be gone forever.

Data wiping software is now available which can also reformat your hard drive, leaving it completely clean (file shredder software is capable of doing the same thing). The one drawback to data wiping software is its cost.

You can avoid paying for expensive software, however, simply by searching the Internet to find the free version. There are some excellent data wiping software applications available at no cost, including the highly popular Erasure.

Wiping the data from your hard drive is one of the more tedious tasks you'll face as a PC owner, but the peace of mind it'll bring you from knowing that your private data remains private makes it well worth the effort!

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