RE: What about OLD computers??

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Christine Sigman wrote:
 
> My husband and I have a few out-of-date but still functioning
computers we
> need to get rid of. I know of several charitable organizations that
will
> ensure they get to a good home, but am concerned about lingering data
on
> the
> hard drives. Is there any program or technique for definitively
scrubbing
> old machines? Any restore disks belonging to these machines are long
gone.

There are many, as a Google search of "wipe hard drive" (sans quotes)
will reveal. Some cost money and are way overkill. MaximumPC recently
debunked the notion that you need to overwrite data 7 times. They say a
single pass of writing zeros to the entire disk is more than enough
security for anyone not interesting to the NSA.

Here are a couple of things to check out: 

HDD Wipe Tool
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.13-HDD-Wipe-Tool/

DBAN
http://www.dban.org/about 

If you want to know more, check out this article:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=129 

HTH!
Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------








^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat