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Your personal information is at risk of being stolen every day. Identity theft is a problem that has affected many individuals. So it critical that you secure erase hard drive disks before disposing of them or giving them away. There are several ways to do this.

The first and easiest method would be to completely destroy the unit. This is going to require some brains and brawn . The first method would be the sledgehammer. Several Thoresque smashes from a heavy duty sledgehammer should sufficiently break open the case.

You can also use powerful magnets. Magnets will scramble the data on the disk until it is in such disarray that the disk is no longer usable. Be sure the magnets you choose are capable of getting the job done.

However, if you are giving away your old computer or HDD, then smashing it in to smithereens is not going to be an option. You can do one of two things: format the disk or wipe it clean.

Formatting a disk is simple. When you format a device, you will notice a warning pops up saying that all data on the disk will be lost. This is what you want, so format away.

The format option does come with a caveat. It is not 100% secure against thieves. A computer specialist with the proper know how can easily recover data from the disk. The reason is that only the address tables are removed from the disk, which makes it difficult but not impossible to recover data.

For total 100% data removal, you will need to wipe your drive clean. This will require the purchase of software, of which there are many excellent applications for erasing HDD data. These programs are very thorough, overwriting each sector of the HDD including the master boot record and partitions.

Hopefully data thieves will never get your information. Now you know what needs to be done to secure erase hard drive disks on your computer. You can never be too careful.

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