Scrubbing PCs

[BigCatMCS]

I need a little help here. This is my first day at a volunteer group, and they want me to "scrub" their computers. In other words, getting all the files and everything else off the hard drive. What's the best way of doing this? Thx.

 

[BigCatMCS]

Also, will just going in and deleting everything do the trick?

 

[jrbarnett]

How secure do you need it to be? What's happening to the PC's afterwards?

John

 

[BigCatMCS]

Not very secure...they are just swapping it out and probably put it in a junk pile.

 

[franklin97355]

east-tech (I think that's right) has a program called eraser ian it says it will do better that DOD specs. I use it on the computers I'm getting rid of.

 

[BigCatMCS]

How can you do it manually?

 

[franklin97355]

If it's going on the junk pile take the disk out and beat it flat with a large hammer. (basic manual proceedure)

 

[BigCatMCS]

We may give a couple back to another non-profit group. How can we get rid of everything?

 

[TonyGroves]

You could boot from a removable disc (FreeDOS on floppy, or Knoppix on CD, for example) and format the drives. That will get rid of everything.

 

[jrbarnett]

Just thinking, booting from a DOS disk and FDISK to remove the partition will stop about 99% of the population getting it. Trouble is, if it gets to the hands of professional data recovery companies your data could be retrieved without much work on their part...

I can't imagine your PC's having sensitive information on though, so that may be sufficient.

John

 

[Freestone]

Format and/or fdisk does not delete data so any number of tools available will recover data with little effort.

Here's a freeware program that will erase data:

http://www.killdisk.com/

 

[trollacious]

Realistically, doing a full format then FDISK will take care of things for the vast number of people getting rid of computers as well as the vast number of people receiving old computers.

One other thing to consider is what operating system the party receiving the computer will have at their disposal to install on the wiped hard drive. If you're not providing the OS disks with the computers, then you're forcing the people you're donating the computers to to either load pirated copies onto the computers, or throw the computers out themselves because it's just not worth the hassle.

If your data is THAT sensitive, then destroy the hard drives. If it's not that serious, uninstall the programs you don't want used, delete the folders for the data from those programs, and then do a Defrag, which will overwrite some of the areas where the deleted files are. There are simple utilities to wipe the remaining areas of the hard drives.

Here's a link to some free stuff for more secure file deletion:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

Lee

 

[edfair]

The systems you are passing on would need more than the operating system to be reallly useful and worthwhile. There are hardware issues also involved with reloading. M/B, video, and sound drivers and the like. So I would suggest the steps trollacious has noted, keeping a fully funcitional OS for the passons.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[loop127]

Drive wiping should not be taken lightly anymore. I recover info from formats accidental or otherwise.

Freestone offers good advice, if you get the free version run it no less than three times.

If you are hung on good 'ol formatting, do it no less than 7 times.

THEN:

take a boot disk 98/me and at the a: prompt type fdisk, click yes for large drive support. type 1 for dos partition and type 1 to make it active, you should get one more for using all of the space available. click yes.

THEN:

at arompt format disk, type format

load new OS

killdisk also writes a log you can print out to give your group as proof and piece of mind.

good luck