How to Delete All Data on Your Computer

Getting rid of your computer? Whether you're donating, selling, or giving it away, be sure to get rid of all the data on it first. If you fail to do so, you risk making yourself vulnerable to identity thieves. Your computer contains traces of information about your identity. To truly get rid of all your data, you will need to overwrite the entire hard disk. Several programs that do this are available. Darik's Boot and Nuke (D-BAN) is one such program that works on Windows computers. It is free to use and open-source, meaning that anyone can scrutinize the program's coding. Read on to learn more.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• CD or diskette

1. Go to Darik's Boot and Nuke website. There you will find a brief description of the program and then the "Download" section.

2. Click on the README.TXT file if you haven't used this program before. This tells you about the program, how to download it onto a floppy, USB drive, or a CD, and how to use the program.

3. Once you have reviewed the readme file, go back and click on the download for either CD and DVD media or floppy disks and USB flash drives.

4. Once you have the program downloaded, re-boot the computer. The readme file has some instructions for how to do this, since the program cannot be started from within Windows, and you need to have the DBAN program start before the operating system on the hard drive is started.

5. Type "autonuke" at the boot prompt to wipe all devices on the computer without confirmation. If you need further help, support is available through the website. Be sure to follow the protocol, outlined within the README file, to get support.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are trying to remove all the data from your MacIntosh computer, you already have a tool to do so. It is called Disk Utility and you can find it in your Utilities folder and on the system installation DVD or CD.
• Another program that will wipe out the entire hard disk of your windows computer is available through the White Canyon website.
• Just deleting files, using the recycle bin, or even formatting the hard disk does NOT get rid of data. Basically, all these things do is let the computer know that these files can be overwritten. However, until the files actually are overwritten, they can easily be recovered with undelete programs.

Resources

• http://www.dban.sourceforge.net
• http://www.whitecanyon.com
• http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/technology