How To Completely Destroy The Data On Your Computer Before Disposing Of It?

When you use a phone or a computer for a long time, it is bound to have a great amount of personal or professional data. You have to ensure its proper disposal so as to prevent someone from exploiting your private data. How to permanently erase data on a hard drive and be safe?

For anyone who knows a little bit more about digital electronics than others, one thing is certain that there is no point in simply deleting the files because they only disappear from the hard drive’s table of contents this way. This means that they are no longer accessible to the user, but just out of sight and out of mind, which is a bad move when it comes to data security. The files removed by normal deletion are still on the hard drive, which means that they can be reproduced, so, how to wipe computer hard drive?

The data, so to speak, is just in the dustbin, and just as everyone can get the papers out of there, so in the digital world, too, anyone who has some knowledge of computers, can easily recover the data.

This is not fundamentally different even if the hard disk has been completely formatted. Even after the standard formatting, the so-called high-level formatting, the digital data is still on the hard disk. This is also not a secure deletion process. So, what is the right way to destroy an old hard drive & how to permanently erase data on a hard drive?

Also Read: Is this the world’s smallest computer? What purpose does it serve?

Seven Characters And Numbers

Rather, special programs that destroy the data on the hard drive are the means of choice. Such software can be purchased, but there are also free tools that can be downloaded from the Internet. They destroy the data by overwriting them once or several times with characters or random numbers. With older hard disks, the files should be overwritten seven times to be on the safe side, thus, is it the way disposing of devices safely?

After that, the data carriers can still be used. For those who intend to pass their computer on to others, however, you need to overwrite it as a whole, regardless of an installed operating system. That’s what DBAN is for. This system can be burned to CD and it deletes so thoroughly that the installed operating system is lost when it is used. If you still need it, you must secure it externally before a DBAN action.

A Case For The Hammer – How to destroy a hard drive data?

However, if a computer is actually to be disposed of as electronic waste, more drastic measures can be taken. Hard drives that are no longer needed are best hit with a hammer. When a hard drive is destroyed with a hammer, it makes data recovery nearly impossible. This is the only effective erasure procedure even with defective data carriers that can no longer be overwritten. Hence, the safely get rid off an old computer.

Also Read: How to Turn Your TV Into a Computer Screen

Companies can have hard drives shredded. Some companies specialize in mobile and mechanical hard drive destruction. They bring something called a shredder, which cuts the panels into small strips of no more than 900 square millimeters.