How to Erase Your Hard Drive
Sooner or later, every PC user is faced with a decision: what to do with his or her old computer after purchasing a new one. If you're in that position, you have a few choices. You could donate the old computer, as long as it's still in working condition, to a school, charity, or library. You could try selling the old computer. Or you could simply toss it.Regardless of how you decide to dispose of the old PC, however, don't forget that once it's out of your possession, you have no control over what happens to the data remaining on its hard drive. With identity theft a soaring problem, the chances that someone would be interested in getting your old computer simply to scrape your personal data from its hard drive are probably much higher than you realize.
You may think that there is really not anything on your hard drive that would matter anyone else, what are you sure you've never entered a credit card or bank account number, your medical information, or any other personal details which you would prefer remain private?To be entirely safe, you should always wipe its hard drive clean before disposing of an old PC. Here are five of the most common ways of doing just that:
1- File and Folder Deletion
You can begin cleaning your hard drive simply by selecting and deleting all your files and folders, and then going into your Recycle Bin and emptying it. Doing this is not terribly effective, however, because while your operating system will no longer be able to detect deleted files, because the file pointer itself has been deleted, the file pointer and the data in those files will still be present on the hard drive. Anyone with the right data recovery software will be able to recover those files without much effort.
2- Reformatting Your Hard Drive
If you want to actually delete all the files on your hard drive, simply reformatting the drive will destroy the structure of the file data. But the data will still remain in a reformatted condition, and anyone with the skills to do so can restore and recover that information
3- Electronic Degaussing
The degaussing process uses an electronic magnet to reverse the magnetic field in a race any contents contained in the magnetic media on your hard drive.
4- Data Overwriting
While overwriting your hard drive data is one way of disguising it, it's generally not considered as safe as wiping the data clean. You wouldn't be entirely certain that you had overwritten 100% of the files on your hard drive, so there could still be a chance of someone accessing your personal information.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Surveys are developed according to the kind of study one want to do. A qualitative research physical exercise calls for a questionnaire design that can take care of the primary purpose: recognize a subject completely and create theory concerning it. Also a quantitative research questionnaire design ought to take care of the main objective: compile information to assist check a recently generated hypothesis. Producing a functional qualitative or quantitative survey layout is no easy task. It calls for the interference of a market researcher that has actually stood the test of time. When trying to find a business to write or assess your questionnaire design, focus on the specialists such as Market research whose workers have actually actively offered clients for more than 10 years.
Post a Comment