Win XP data wipe?

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buck91

buck91

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Found an old Dell in the basement running WinXP. I want to completely wipe the HDD (all 19gb of it!) prior to donating/recycling it. Any suggestions? I was going to just delete all my files and use ccleaner but it won't install on that OS, seems to be lacking multiple DLL's. I did find DBAN but my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive to burn the iso and the old Dell's BIOS doesn't support bootable USB. Ideally I'd like an alternative to cclean which I could load via thumb drive into the WinXP environment and run...
 
A hammer / drill is much more fun.

For computers that I sell or give away I let it sit in the corner and write 0's / 1's for days and then sell / give it away like that or put an O/S back on for them.
 
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You need the interface/adapter from whatever is in the HD interface (IDE/SATA) to USB.

Take off the HD and hook it up to a running computer with current OS.

Then you can run Disk Management on the remote USB drive (old drive) and do whatever you want to it including formating with writing 0's and 1's.
Then you can put it back on with a wiped HD.

My logic say that you cannot wipe the HD that you use to boot the computer.
I can be wrong, though.
 
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Put your ISO and some sort of ISO CD-burning software on a USB stick, then run all that "one last time" on the old XP machine. I guess I'm assuming *that* machine can burn CDRs.
 
Burn a copy of Knoppix on a CD and use the secure delete function to wipe the drive, as an alternative to blowing it to bits.
wink.gif
 
I have no input. I just wanted to say that when I first saw the thread title I thought it said "Wix XP data wipe?"
45.gif
 
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Download an old Lubuntu version (maybe earlier than ver. 14), burn the iso image to a bootable cd or dvd, and use that to install the Linux OS to the old HDD. That way, you erase the old data and get a useable machine at the same time.
 
Originally Posted by buck91
Found an old Dell in the basement running WinXP. I want to completely wipe the HDD (all 19gb of it!) prior to donating/recycling it. Any suggestions? I was going to just delete all my files and use ccleaner but it won't install on that OS, seems to be lacking multiple DLL's. I did find DBAN but my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive to burn the iso and the old Dell's BIOS doesn't support bootable USB. Ideally I'd like an alternative to cclean which I could load via thumb drive into the WinXP environment and run...


My opinion- the hard drive is worthless. Save yourself some time and smash it or drill it. With that size HD, the PC itself might be worthless so I doubt its worth your time to try to sell it. Def recycle though.
 
Does it boot up? If so, why can't you download a DBAN ISO and burn the disk from the DELL?

Then you can burn from the CD or DVD and wipe it?

If you can't then just physically destroy the very small drive and be done with it.

Originally Posted by JMJNet
You need the interface/adapter from whatever is in the HD interface (IDE/SATA) to USB.

Take off the HD and hook it up to a running computer with current OS.

Then you can run Disk Management on the remote USB drive (old drive) and do whatever you want to it including formating with writing 0's and 1's.
Then you can put it back on with a wiped HD.

My logic say that you cannot wipe the HD that you use to boot the computer.
I can be wrong, though.



Originally Posted by buck91
Found an old Dell in the basement running WinXP. I want to completely wipe the HDD (all 19gb of it!) prior to donating/recycling it. Any suggestions? I was going to just delete all my files and use ccleaner but it won't install on that OS, seems to be lacking multiple DLL's. I did find DBAN but my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive to burn the iso and the old Dell's BIOS doesn't support bootable USB. Ideally I'd like an alternative to cclean which I could load via thumb drive into the WinXP environment and run...

Originally Posted by eljefino
Put your ISO and some sort of ISO CD-burning software on a USB stick, then run all that "one last time" on the old XP machine. I guess I'm assuming *that* machine can burn CDRs.
 
Originally Posted by rubberchicken
Originally Posted by buck91
Found an old Dell in the basement running WinXP. I want to completely wipe the HDD (all 19gb of it!) prior to donating/recycling it. Any suggestions? I was going to just delete all my files and use ccleaner but it won't install on that OS, seems to be lacking multiple DLL's. I did find DBAN but my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive to burn the iso and the old Dell's BIOS doesn't support bootable USB. Ideally I'd like an alternative to cclean which I could load via thumb drive into the WinXP environment and run...


My opinion- the hard drive is worthless. Save yourself some time and smash it or drill it. With that size HD, the PC itself might be worthless so I doubt its worth your time to try to sell it. Def recycle though.

I agree. A few holes drilled through the HDD or smash it a few times with a sledge hammer will render it useless, and eliminate any chance of data retrieval.
 
Originally Posted by buck91
Found an old Dell in the basement running WinXP. I want to completely wipe the HDD (all 19gb of it!) prior to donating/recycling it. Any suggestions? I was going to just delete all my files and use ccleaner but it won't install on that OS, seems to be lacking multiple DLL's. I did find DBAN but my current laptop doesn't have an optical drive to burn the iso and the old Dell's BIOS doesn't support bootable USB. Ideally I'd like an alternative to cclean which I could load via thumb drive into the WinXP environment and run...


Better updated computers (Win 7/8/10) are cheap. The best wipe for that XP is a sledgehammer.
 
Originally Posted by berniedd
Download an old Lubuntu version (maybe earlier than ver. 14), burn the iso image to a bootable cd or dvd, and use that to install the Linux OS to the old HDD. That way, you erase the old data and get a useable machine at the same time.

Not really. Only as much data as the OS requires will be overwritten. The rest will be there and recoverable.

This is not a theoretical hazard. I've used Testdisk/Photorec to recover data on reformatted, OS re-installed disk drives. Since the OS goes on at the start of the disk (whatever OS it is), the user data tends to be further in on the partition(s), and is usually still there.
 
pull the drive out and destroy it. takes two minutes. DBAN on that would take like ten hours. Nobody wants an xp era computer anyways. Recycle it.
 
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