If you don’t? Your files are there for the tech savvy to find. Your personal information is stored on a computer’s hard drive unless you take the steps to wipe the hard drive clean. Why? The delete button doesn’t actually delete your information permanently. Your medical records, browser history, login info for your bank account, and past emails - your computer’s hard derive can hold traces of them all.Īnd it’s not enough to simply delete your old files. You may think that’s not a lot of stuff, but your old computers and laptops probably hold plenty of information, much of which you don’t want anyone to see. That means clearing out all the personal and financial information that your computer has collected. But there’s something you must do first - wipe your computer hard drive. Remember to enter the correct drive or partition when executing this command.You’re ready to donate or recycle your old computer gear. The above command will write zeros to all the blocks, a block size of 4096, in the specified device or partition, sda in this case.

If you want to reuse the drive, you can type: if=dev/zero of=dev/sda bs=4096 This powerful command can be used to convert, copy, and destroy data. If you’re familiar with Linux or Unix, then you might already know about the built-in dd command.

This handy software is available for Windows and Linux, comes with a simple GUI, and can even be installed on a live USB with its portable version. Unplug the DBAN media, reconnect your hard drives and reboot your computer.ĭBAN is the nuclear option if you want to securely wipe a hard drive but there is nothing better for getting the job done! BleachBitīleachBit is designed to securely clear caches, delete files, erase all the content of a partition or drive, compress an image or drive for storage, and reduce the size of backups.Wait for the black Pass screen to signify completion.Select the drive from the list in the next window by pressing space.Press Enter at the blue DBAN screen to load into interactive mode.Boot your computer from the DVD or USB.

Disconnect any other hard drives that you don’t want to wipe including your boot drive.

Download DBAN and install it to a DVD or a USB drive.

Clearing a hard drive