I have a couple of old laptops lying around and want to throw them away, but have been cautious to do so because of privacy concerns of data still on the hard drives. What is the best way to wipe them? Or should I take them out and physically destroy them?

They are running windows vista and 10 I think.

  • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    It depends how badly you need that data to never see the light of day again. Most likely, you’ll be fine to erase the drives with secure erase options (where it writes 0 and then 1 to the whole drive, and back and forth a few times depending on settings), but if you really really need to 100% guarantee there’s absolutely no chance of recovery, then you’ll need to destroy the drives physically

    • NotSpez@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      There is nothing extremely sensitive on there, but the more time I spend on lemmy (as a bit of a tech noob) the more I care about privacy

      • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        11 months ago

        In that case, secure wipe should be more than enough

        also, if you’re getting rid of them, there might be a charity you can donate them to rather than just tossing them. Idk any off the top of my head, but it seems worth looking into