How should I decommission my laptop?

[Mordac]

Really!? Is that a real argument!? What a hard drive spinning or not has to do with securely wipe out the data!?

If you don't securely wipe out the data it can be recovered even from burn HDD or physically damaged HDD. If you do it properly, it can work like new that would be very, very, veryyyy difficult to recover anything meaningful...

You have free tools that will wipe out the data and overwrite the all hard drive 3, 5, 30 times (as many as you think will let you sleep at night). Let me know if you can recover anything after that! If you can maybe you could be doing VERY, VERY, VERYYYY GOOD money!

Best of luck with that, I wouldn't recommend it, and as I said, I have a nice little sideline in that area.

("Anything that is free is probably worth what you paid for it" - that may be less true than it used to be, but I'm old-school).

[CryingSheep]

Oh dear.

There are a few people currently serving at her Majesty's Pleasure who would dearly wish that what you say is true.

Do you have anything to support that they wipe out properly the hard drives ans wasn't just a case of incompetence?

[CryingSheep]

Best of luck with that, I wouldn't recommend it, and as I said, I have a nice little sideline in that area.

("Anything that is free is probably worth what you paid for it" - that may be less true than it used to be, but I'm old-school).

That might be it... My business account is free and so far so good, my personal accounts not only are free but pays me to have it - no complaints, python is free and is the most popular language this days, 99% of my laptop software is free and fit for purpose, and I could go all day...

[vwdan]

Sadly you are SO VERY WRONG. I make occasional good money retrieving data from failed disks which won't even spin-up any more. Any app which can reformat a disk so it can't be read will cost you more than it's worth to just remove and destroy the disk.

Absolute. Complete. Bollocks.

If it's zeroed you're getting zilch off it and plenty of apps can do that. SSD's are different, however.

[Mordac]

That might be it... My business account is free and so far so good, my personal accounts not only are free but pays me to have it - no complaints, python is free and is the most popular language this days, 99% of my laptop software is free and fit for purpose, and I could go all day...

I'm sure your copy of Freecell* is free, but when it comes to data security, free is way too cheap.

*One for the teenagers...

[vwdan]

Oh dear.

There are a few people currently serving at her Majesty's Pleasure who would dearly wish that what you say is true.

I'll bet there aren't, because if it were possible it's certainly not tech that the Police have and it's certainly not things that you display as part of a chain of evidence in court. You're describing state level technology that, to date, has NEVER been displayed publicly. I'm a long time past my interest in computer forensics (and, again, SSD's have changed a lot of things) but in terms of magnetic media last I recall was that it was once proven on a handful of bits back in the 80's on very low density hard drives. It's never been demonstrated that it's possible to read data even after a single pass on a modern mechanical hard disk.

Google the Great Zero Challenge.

[Mordac]

Absolute. Complete. Bollocks.

If it's zeroed you're getting zilch off it and plenty of apps can do that. SSD's are different, however.

Anything that can do that (and there are military-grade apps that can) will cost you. If it's free, assume that you are getting limited functionality. Why bother paying to wipe the disk when anyone buying the machine for re-use will (if they have any sense) buy a new disk anyway. I was involved in "fixing" a situation whereby lots of bank customers' data was left on a supposedly wiped disk, which was left in a server sold on Ebay.
My point being, if you want certainty, smash the disk as much as you can, if you give away a working drive it *might* give up some of your secrets.

[WTFH]

Absolute. Complete. Bollocks.

If it's zeroed you're getting zilch off it and plenty of apps can do that. SSD's are different, however.

Totally this. A "failed disk" or one that won't spin up, or has an error in the MBR, or has been quick formatted - those are completely different to a drive that has been wiped and over-written.

Here's what CCleaner does for it's secure deletion:
CCleaner has four methods of secure deletion: a Simple Overwrite (1 pass), DOD 5220.22-M (3 passes), NSA (7 passes), and Gutmann (35 passes). A 'pass' refers to how many times CCleaner writes over the spot on the hard drive. The more times CCleaner writes to that spot, the harder the file will be to recover by any means. The drawback is that it will take CCleaner longer to complete the job.

[sal]

Either wipe the disk properly or if more paranoid remove it, replace it with £15ish quid SSD if you are donating/selling

Personally I would hand down to kids/relatives or donate to school/charity, not worth the hassle selling 6 years old Laptop

[Mordac]

Totally this. A "failed disk" or one that won't spin up, or has an error in the MBR, or has been quick formatted - those are completely different to a drive that has been wiped and over-written.

Here's what CCleaner does for it's secure deletion:
CCleaner has four methods of secure deletion: a Simple Overwrite (1 pass), DOD 5220.22-M (3 passes), NSA (7 passes), and Gutmann (35 passes). A 'pass' refers to how many times CCleaner writes over the spot on the hard drive. The more times CCleaner writes to that spot, the harder the file will be to recover by any means. The drawback is that it will take CCleaner longer to complete the job.

Do you want the aggro, or, for the sake of a 5 min removal job, do you want certainty?