Re the nail through the drive, I couldn't agree more Will. Every day we're being reminded of the scarcity of the materials and resources that make the life we enjoy so possible (at least the news, movies and magazines i'm seeing), it doesn't seem like a good choice to me to destroy something needlessly. Organizations who need certification (or want it) that their data is safely removed can send the hard drive (or whole pc) to someplace like greendisk.com up in new hampshire, you'll get a nice certificate ;). there are more and more of these type org's popping up and this one in particular promises your e-waste wont be getting shipped oversees. getting the data securely removed prior to donating a working pc will require a middleman like myself unless you have a bunch of hours to put into it. It's not economically feasible considering the cost of a technicians labor but it's absolutely worth the effort for a number reasons, especially if the PC is useful as you point out Will. I don't offer this service publicly but do this a lot for existing clients (if the pc is worth it), as its time intensive to refurb a pc for donation _especially_ if you need the data (really securely) wiped first. The shed util that people have mentioned is on my suse linux server by default, and I found that it should be on a Knoppix live cd you can download and run on any drive the system can see. http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2F2006%2Fs1706%2F51s06%2F51s06.asp This might be a good business startup opportunity if someone could come up with a way to refurb pcs for less $ than a typical solution provider like myself would have to charge for my time. The tricky part is offering the validated secure removal of customer data, and then getting an OS back on the machine. There's no quick way to do it unless economies of scale come into play, for example with a bunch of the same model computers which would allow the ability to do hard drive cloning and cut your labor. Will Loving wrote: > Having said all that, I understand the concerns of people about the data on > their hard drives. In my experience, it is extremely unlikely that anyone > receiving your old computer in Africa will have the knowledge necessary > scavenge the drive for personal data of any value, especially if you use > some of the suggestions that others have posted and to wipe the drive and > then do a clean system installation from the original install disk. > -- Thank you, Matt Lampiasi, President Florence I.T. - A Community IT shop. 413-303-9167 or @ florenceit.net <http://florenceit.net> New! Enterprise class spam filtering with backup mail service affordably priced per user. Setup in minutes for the entire office without a site visit, a great small business value. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20080528/7ac0a3c1/attachment-0005.html