Q. Hi Richard, I now have a new laptop and one day I will need to dispose of my old tower PC. From a security point of view can I successfully delete everything on it, or do I have to take it to a professional technician to delete the contents?
A. Hi Mary, it’s a good question – as you have probably heard simply deleting the contents of your personal information will not destroy it, it still remains easily recoverable from your computer until such a time as its overwritten by more information. There are a number of companies that will be able to offer you data wiping services, BlueMoon Solutions is one of them, however if you are wanting to be 100% sure yourself that your information has been destroyed then probably one of the most effective ways is to remove the hard drive platters (the things inside your hard drive that store information) and physically destroy them – this also happens to be quite a satisfying way to kill your data! I have done a bit of searching and a guy called David Gewirtz has published a step by step guide on how to do this – you can find it at http://tinyurl.com/c2fr2k