Few Tips for Donating a Computer

Disposing of the computer system after buying the new one is the common work performed by the users. But there is better ways of doing the same deed-to donate. You can donate the system to the one who is in a real need. May be the system is worthless for you due to the degraded performance but the same can prove as the valuable assest for another person or organization. There are some guidelines or tips which you can use when passing along the systems:

First check out whether the system is really usable or not. This can be judged on the age of the computer, if this age is less then chances are there that it can be put into use by someone else.
The broken or the old hardware should be tagged for recycling then. A computer recycler is a business or organization that salvages useful computer parts before breaking down what's left, safely removing hazardous materials in the process. Determine if your old computer can be reused.
If possible, try to keep the operating system intact. This will prove worthless if the system is not in the proper running condition as then the organization would have to spend money to get it running and usually the charitable institutions have not such amount of finance to spend.
If the computer's hard drive had ever possessed any of the personal information then it is best to use the drive-wipe utility to get rid off permanently. Your personal information includes your internet browser's cache, cookies, history; your email contacts and messages; your documents; your bank account information; your recycle or trash folder; and all nontransferable software. The best way to clear this is with a drive wipe utility that overwrites all the sectors of your hard drives, making your data unrecoverable.

Wipe hard drive is the technique which has overridden the usual formatting and other data deletion methods. Actually the data deleted through either of the process remains over your hard drive and can be accessed through the use of data recovery software. But the drive wipe technique is the master of all and makes the recovery impossible by overwriting the data through arbitrarily passing the streams of binary data over the existing one.

Now the question is why to take these precise steps? Actually the data after moving from your hands can become a threat for you, if gets recovered by the criminal hands. History is littered with the incidents in which the leak of information has made some organization to halt. So this becomes important to wipe hard drive before donating the system.

The drive wipe is an easy task performed by the drive wipe software which makes use of the powerful algorithms to overwrite the data. But choosing the best one is recommended in order to avoid further problems.

Stellar Disk Wipe is the utility which is trustworthy in each case. Seeking the criticality of your personal data, the software has been designed to use up to 35 passes. The user is free to select among the drive wiping algorithms.

This drive wipe software comes in the form of a bootable CD and you need not to install the same. The software is able to wipe all types of files including the locked systems files.

Article submitted Thursday, July 17, 2008
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