I asked this once and I lost the thread. My wife bought a new laptop and once she removes the files she wants what is the best way to wipe the hard drive?
Thanks but I have a problem. My wife's laptop disk drive is ***** and all she has is an external and I can't get it to boot from there. I have dban on a DVD-R any suggestions??
My recommendation is to have the hard drive physically shredded or use it for target practice. I know that in some parts of the country Centas (the uniform company) will shred hard drives.
Take the hard drive out of the system. Open it up and take out the platter, and go to town on it. Bend it...beat it...cut it..hold a magnet to the surface. Nobody is ever going to get data off that platter ever again.
If you want to reuse the drive personally - just format it and use it. If you are throwing it away, and want to ensure that it can't be read, then drill some holes in it.
Way too much emphasis is put on clearing hard drives for disposal! Put it in a black (so it can't be seen from the outside) garbage bag and send it out with the trash. If you really 'must' have double assurance, all drives have a little sticker on the back covering a hole to the inside. Take a small phillips screwdriver and drive it in that hole with a hammer. If it's a ceramic platter it will break, if it's an alloy, the platter will bend. Making either unreadable.
