Need to wipe out old Windows Vista HDD

canderson

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,566
Harrisburg, Pa.
I have an old laptop I want out of the house. It has IIRC Vista (it might have XP but I'm pretty sure Vista).

I don't have access to a disk burner. The laptop has USB drives and I have a bunch of USB sticks lying around. How can I obliterate this drive to donate to a local charity? It had some social security number files on it from a previous job, plus some tax-sensitive material.
 
canderson

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,566
Harrisburg, Pa.
I've tried destroying physical HDDs before without much luck. I can't ever drill through the plate to get to the discs, hammering just warps the casing and outer elements without getting to the discs, etc.

And I don't own a gun. :)
 
jercra

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2006
3,151
Arvada, Co
Physical destruction is the only true protection of your data but unless you think this charity org you'll donate to is run by Russian hackers you'll probably be just fine using any of a number of bootable disk wipe programs. Just do a Google search for USB bootable disk wipe utilities.
 
canderson

canderson

Mr. Brightside
SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
39,566
Harrisburg, Pa.
jercra said:
Physical destruction is the only true protection of your data but unless you think this charity org you'll donate to is run by Russian hackers you'll probably be just fine using any of a number of bootable disk wipe programs. Just do a Google search for USB bootable disk wipe utilities.
Click to expand...
OK, thanks - that works.

And I doubt the local association of the blind is run by Putin, but they did just recently renovate their offices ...
 
AlNipper49

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
SoSH Member
Apr 3, 2001
44,902
Mtigawi
Just wipe the drive with a bootable disk, take the disk and chuck it down your basement. Nobody will ever try to recover anything from it.
 
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