Erase Private Data from Old Hard Drives

Since you have decided to buy a new computer, you are now planning to give away the old one. This is a wise decision because other people will be benefited aside from the fact that your old computer will still be put to good use other than when you decide to just dump it in your storage room. However you have this fear that the computer might land on the hands of an ill-intentioned person who might deliberately retrieve data from your old hard drives.

You know very well that you have cleared all your cache, deleted everything from your windows files and made sure not a single picture was retained in the computer's memory. But that's not enough because even if you press the Delete button, you are only deleting the shortcut reference to the files, but they still remain in your hard drives. This makes your hard drives vulnerable to data theft if your old computer is passed on to technology smart people. Now think of the danger of exposing your confidential and sensitive information to these individuals. You need to do something to avoid this possibility.

Before disposing your old computer, you may want to give it a full reformat. Take note, it should be a full reformat process, not just a quick one, to ensure that the files are thoroughly erased from the hard drive. After reformatting and after all data have been removed, install back all operating systems in the disc so the computer will be ready for use by the person who will later take possession of your computer.

Another way of entirely wiping your data in your old hard drives is by using disk-wiping applications. Hackers are very smart and actually use special anti-deleting or recovery software. But you have to be smarter if you don't want precious data undisclosed by scheming users. If you use a disk-wiping application, what happens is you will be overwriting all data over and over on the hard drive. With this method you can feel more secure that no other person can easily retrieve whatever files are left in your old hard drives.

You may also decide to hire the services of data recovery specialists to do the job for you. Yet the question is: how much is it going to cost you? And can you be sure the person you are hiring will absolutely purge your hidden data? Ponder on this very carefully. The common problem with hiring people is they sometimes do their jobs the shorter way if they know no one is watching as they work. Now if hiring someone is the only solution, try to keep a vigilant eye on them as they cleanse your hard drives.

One important note: Before reformatting or wiping your data from your hard drives, don't forget to back up your files first by storing them in disks or transferring them to another computer so you won't lose any pertinent records.

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