Don't Toss That Drive... Yet!

One of the more common questions I am asked is "How do I dispose of my old computer parts safely?" Usually this question is more about the proper disposal of e-waste (hint: you don't just throw it in the trash can), yet there is another side of disposing of old hardware that the average user rarely considers; how does one make sure that the information stored on this device does not fall into the wrong hands?

You may not know it, but when you delete a file from your computer it doesn't actually go anywhere. Deleting a file essentially just deletes the location ("address") of that file from the table ("phone book") on the disk drive that tells the computer where the file is located. Much like having an unlisted number in a phone book doesn't actually remove your house from its location, it just unclutters the phone book and makes it harder to find.

For someone with experience working on computers, it is relatively simple to read the contents of a disk and see the remnants of these files and the information contained in them. There are those unscrupulous individuals who actively search out old hard drives and computers in the hopes of uncovering personal information about the former user that can then be used for identity theft or other unsavory things.

You can see why it's not a good idea to just throw away your hard drive or donate your computer even if you've deleted your files (note: on most computers even formatting your hard drive only destroys the "phone book", leaving all the data intact on the drive). So are we all doomed to slowly fill up our garages or cupboards with old hard drives that we don't dare dispose of? How do we protect this data?

One way to do this is called "wiping" the hard drive. What wiping does is it actually goes to the file location on the disk and overwrites it multiple times with random data, making it harder to recover. Working off my prior allegory of the phone book and the house, you can liken this to bulldozing your house and then unlisting your number... no one will find your house then! There are several applications that you can download that will do this type of wiping for you:

One of my favorite open-source options is Darik's Boot and Nuke. If you prefer a full-featured program that can even be used on individual files BCWipe by Jetico will do Department of Defense level wiping. There's even wiping software built directly into your hard drive that you can use (I'll leave that to be explained by Robin Harris).

Once you successfully wipe all the data off your hard drive, you can safely donate it to your favorite charity or sell it at your next garage sale without worrying about your old Quickbooks data or tax returns falling into the wrong hands.