Korean Job Discussion Forums

[six]

I'm about to leave Korea for the summer and I'll be giving my computer to a friend. What are the best ways to make sure it is fully cleaned without simply buying new hard drives? I plan to reinstall Windows, but will that wipe everything? Also, if anyone knows what happened to the "Clear All Personal Data" option in Firefox, I'd like to use that at work.

[Swampfox10mm]

Download a program called DBan. Burn a copy to disc as the website specifies. Assuming you have the Windows install discs and key code, you can run DBan and it will wipe and overwrite you hard drives to FBI specs if you want. That takes a day. Then run a fresh Windows install.

http://www.dban.org

If you dont have any info you deem sensitive, then just a windows reinstallation including format is good enough, without dban.

[akcrono]

You're giving it to a friend. Unless he's untrustworthy or you have extremely sensitive data on your computer, a simple reformat and reinstall will work. That will "erase" the files as far as a layman is concerned.

What happens with a reformat is that it deletes the table of contents entry but doesn't overwrite the file in question. This means that the space is available for use, but the actual file hasn't technically been erased. For example:you have a file called MonekyGoatDolphin3some.avi . When you reformat your hard drive, the ToC information (how big it is, where it is, etc.) for MonekyGoatDolphin3some.avi gets deleted, but the actual 1's and 0's for the file remain until the get overwritten by something else. When your friend uses the reformated computer, he will not be able to find MonekyGoatDolphin3some.avi no matter what kind of search it does, because the windows ToC has no information on it. However, there are programs that can search for files. This is why the FBI finds data on criminals' computers even though they deleted OMGwearesogonnablowupthewhitehouse.docx months ago.

In short: unless you have really sensitive data and your friend is a dbag w/ computer skills, don't worry about it.

[vDroop]

Just format all partitions during your clean windows install. Unless you are a secret spy agent. If so, follow the directions above.

[djloekee27]

[six]

Thanks guys, I figured the reformat + reinstall would be good enough and it is. Now, about that Firefox... I can't really reinstall windows here at work, so will uninstalling FF do the trick?