Objective
Following these steps will enable you to securely wipe your device so that data cannot be easily retrieved from it after it is disposed.
Environment
Windows
macOS
Linux on x86 Hardware
Before You Begin
As a precaution in securing institutional data and safeguarding the privacy of confidential data, the disk should be wiped before disposing of a computer. Simply deleting a file leaves all the data intact and tells the device that it is ok to overwrite it. Such data is relatively easy to recover until it gets overwritten, which may take a long time to happen. Wiping forces the device to overwrite the data immediately, and usually several times. This prevents the data from being easily retrieved or restored.
Be sure to retain copies of any institutional data as required by federal or state law, contract, or MSU policy.
A reformat and reinstall of the operating system is not sufficient in wiping sensitive data. Many programs exist that can filter through reformatted and reloaded storage devices to retrieve deleted data if it is not sanitized properly.
Steps
Windows
- Click on the following link to visit the Active @ KillDisk website: http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm.
- Review the instructions in the user's guide(s) provided at the killdisk.com site
- Sanitize your machine.
macOS
Data wiping MacOS systems is done through disk utility software included with the OS. Apple provides some limited details in their (archived) http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1820 article.
Linux on x86 Hardware
- Click on the following link to visit the Active@KillDisk website: http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm.
- Review the instructions in the user's guide(s) provided at the killdisk.com site.
- Sanitize your machine.
Removable Drives
It is highly advised to securely clean any storage device of data before transferring ownership or disposing of the device.
Numerous freeware or low-cost utilities are available for the purpose and may be found by searching a service such as http://download.cnet.com/ using terms such as "sanitize" or "data cleaner."
Additional Info
N/A