If you decide to say goodbye to your old PC or laptop, the question is: "Sell or to the landfill?". In either case, it is smart to thoroughly destroy the data on your hard drive, without physically harming your computer.
Step 1: Formatting pointless
If you think 'I have nothing to hide', we recommend that you do not say this too quickly. If an expert puts your old computer on his desk, it's easy to retrieve photos, documents, and other files. Also read: PC infected with malware? That's how you clean it up!
Also think about mail, passwords, tax returns and everything that has to do with your private data. Retrieving all kinds of login details from social media, webshops and websites is often child's play. To safely dispose of or sell your computer, you can do two things: take out the hard drive and smash it or overwrite each bit on the hard drive multiple times with a random 0 or 1.
Erase hard drive? Formatting does not help, but startup and cleaning with DBAN does!
Step 2: DBAN on USB stick
There are several programs to completely clean up your hard drive, both free and commercial. DBAN works thoroughly and simply. You install the program on a USB stick. You can then boot the computer with this stick and destroy the disk. It is also possible to create a bootable CD or DVD. More information about the latter can be found on the website of Darik's Boot And Nuke.
You may prepare the stick on any computer, but don't use it on a system you don't want to destroy! It goes without saying that you must first secure all your data from your old computer. The easiest way to make the DBAN stick is with the Universal USB Installer. Insert an empty USB stick (32 MB or larger) into the computer and check the drive letter. The drive letter of the USB stick on our test computer is F. Download and start Universal USB Installer.
Step 3: Shred Disk
In Universal USB Installer, select at Step 1 the option DBAN. Place a checkmark Download Link and get the DBAN iso file. Click at Step 2 on Browse and point to the iso file. Choose at Step 3 the drive letter of your USB stick and activate the option format. click on Create to create the stick. Insert the DBAN sub-stick into the computer you want to destroy and boot the system.
If the computer does not boot from the stick, you should select the stick as the first boot device (boot device). DBAN has few options. Indicate that you want to destroy your disk and with which method (you can choose from several 'strengths'). Only after you emphatically confirm that you know what you are doing does DBAN wipe your hard drive.
