If I delete my documents & pictures & empty the trash will they be gone permanently?

[Margaret T]

I am cleaning my Dell Deminsion 8100 of all my personal things (hopefully) as I have purchased a new computer. I'm not sure if I'll recycle this one or give it to someone to use for parts or to experiment with. I want to make sure all personal items are off. This is a first for me and I would appreciate any help you may be able to give me.

Thank You,
Margaret T

[z1p]

Hello Margaret T and welcome to CTH,

If you just you the recycle bin to delete files, the deleted files can be recovered (at least partially). You need to securely erase the files (shred them) in order to make them unrecoverable. There many tools out there that and most allow you to securely erase the unused contents of a disk.

One way to accomplish the free space erasure is using cipher from Microsoft with the /w option. This will do a good job of wiping the free space on your disk.

If you google shred deleted files or shred disk free space you can find lots of programs that will also do the job.

-z1p

[renegade600]

one of the best utilities to clean the drive is dban. It will do a secure cleaning to make sure your files are unrecoverable. It will take a while to run.
http://www.dban.org/

a couple other things you can do with the old computer. you can remove the harddrive and add it as additional storage for your new computer. you can check out linux another but free operating system. if interested check out http://www.ubuntu.com/. If you purchased a monitor for your new computer, you can use the old and have a dual monitor setup.

remember if you sell or give away your computer you need to make sure you give all disks and such for everything that is installed in it. If the os is the one that came with it, make sure the oem sticker is still on the case.

[z1p]

PLEASE NOTE: Dban will erase the whole hard drive, not just the free space on the drive. The options I was referring to just securely erases data from deleted files from the drive.

So use dban if you want to wipe the whole hard drive. You could us it then install a new OS or leave the drive blank.

Another option, depending on the system, would be to restore the machine to the factory configuration, then use one of the other methods to securely erase all the free space. This will basically give you a system as it was shipped from the factory without traces of your data on it.

Originally Posted by renegade600

one of the best utilities to clean the drive is dban. It will do a secure cleaning to make sure your files are unrecoverable. It will take a while to run.
http://www.dban.org/

a couple other things you can do with the old computer. you can remove the harddrive and add it as additional storage for your new computer. you can check out linux another but free operating system. if interested check out http://www.ubuntu.com/. If you purchased a monitor for your new computer, you can use the old and have a dual monitor setup.

remember if you sell or give away your computer you need to make sure you give all disks and such for everything that is installed in it. If the os is the one that came with it, make sure the oem sticker is still on the case.

[renegade600]

yep dban will wipe the whole drive and that imo, is what you should do. you do not know what links or other information are left in different programs thats currently installed. for example if you use ie and you saved passwords on different sites, just deleting cookies may not get it all. another example is some security programs keep log files and in those logs may show web addresses that you been to.

you just want to make sure there is no way anything personal is left on your computer.

[z1p]

Dan, can't argue that wiping the disk fully isn't the safest course. But, restoring from the factory recovery partition and then wiping the free space is pretty close. The factory restore should wipe out the old accounts and there info. The only difference is that the bits where the OS ends up aren't written multiple times, so if you are really paranoid you could worry that someone with sophisticated technology could determine what the old value of those bits were. But, I don't thing that is the average person needs to worry about.



If I'm not mistaken dban will wipe the whole hard drive, so if you have a system that didn't come with a disk, only a recovery partition, and use dban, you end up with no OS.

Its a valid and reasonable choice, but it is something to be aware of.

[renegade600]

Originally Posted by z1p

If I'm not mistaken dban will wipe the whole hard drive, so if you have a system that didn't come with a disk, only a recovery partition, and use dban, you end up with no OS.

you can designate partitions with dban so you will not lose the recovery partition

[z1p]

thx Dan. That's good to know.