REcycling an old Win XP computer

[#1]

Hi

I've been asked to dispose of am old Win XP tower PC. I need to clean the hard drive. I thought I had some old XP installation CDs but I chucked them out thinking I'd never need them again. There's no recovery partition to access either. I'd have taken the HDDs out and put them in a caddy to clean them that way but they are IDE and I don't have that interface. 

Is there a good way of doing this using a linux live CD ?

Sorry Linux isn't really my thing but I will follow clear instructions.

Would appreciate some help

[#2]

@the_groundsman I don't think they need 'cleaning' - personally, I'd just take a lump-hammer to them.

[#3]

@the_groundsman  if you really want to leave it intact but 'clean' then I'd use the systemrescue live CD https://www.system-rescue.org/Download/

Its got shred, wipe and nwipe included https://www.system-rescue.org/manual/Secure_Deletion_of_Data/

[#4]

@the_groundsman 

If you were to boot into a live Linux environment from a flash drive (or DVD)

It is likely that if there is only one XP physical drive, then the HDD will probably be identified as device "/dev/sda"

If you open a terminal window and type the following command -

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=1 status=progress

... that will write binary zero's from start to end of the drive surface

[#5 · Accepted solution]

@the_groundsman 

Hitting them with a hammer sounds easy but some of these old discs are housed in very solid cases. Personally I always take the actual platters out and destroy them individually, there can be several. You’ll be surprised how tough some are, others shatter so care is required. There’s also some very powerful magnets that can be useful.

[#6]

@the_groundsman 

When you say "dispose" of a tower PC are you talking about scraping or re-cycling it?

If the latter then a data clense is all you need leaving the XP operating system in place. There might be a buyer for the PC with XP - if not then they could install Linux. Alternatively you could install Linux which I think re-formats the entire drive.

Brian

[#7]

Like @Baldrick1 my method of secure erasure is to dismantle the drives and apply serious damage to the platter(s) inside.

Most drives are quite easy to take apart with a  few appropriate (usually Torx) drivers.

Even if the system itself is to be repurposed you probably want to destroy the hard drive and replace it, possibly with an SSD.

[#8]

Thanks for all the helpful comments. I'm doing this for a friend and they asked for a clean up but actually they just want the giant thing out of their life. Having a look in the Bios, booting from floppy, cd and HDD are all that's available, so that explains why trying to boot from flash or dvd fails. I have no blank  cds to hand.

Amazingly one of the people in my little village has some XP installation cds so I'll give that a go before going down the route of trying to dismantle the drives. 

[#9]

@the_groundsman 

I’m a little confused what you will do with the installation disks? How are they used to securely wipe a disk? 

[#10]

If I remember right, the installation cd loads in ram and includes a few utilities, including the ability to format the drives. Pretty sure I checked that recently but I may be wrong. It's been years since I touch XP.

Does that sound crazy then?

Would have preferred to run a live Linux distro and clean up the drives that way but struggling to find a way to do that.

If necessary I will be going down the physical distruction route

[#11]

@the_groundsman  You  can burn a linux distro using WIndows to a CD ROM 

scroll down a bit to the second option on this link

https://tutonics.com/articles/how-to-create-a-bootable-live-cddvd/

I would suggest earlier version of Linux Mint...  12 or 14..( both are 32 bit ) ...( current version is 21.3 .) for smaller size .iso file

Here is a link to download and install Mint 14.

https://www.getmyos.com/linux-mint-14-nadia

Download button is on the right above the Description title . ! .

After download, and burn to cdrom...  insert the CDROM... boot up the machine... and boot to the cdrom.

it should then "run" and evntually give you a "desktop" with LM in the middle of screen.... you should be able to use the cdrom to do an install on the hdd... one of the options will be to "wipe the entire drive" (or similar) and install Linux Mint" .

[#12]

@the_groundsman 

I assumed that you wanted to securely wipe the disks, not just reformat ithem.

[#13]

I was tasked with safely getting rid of the pc. I thought a full format of the HDD would be secure but may be not. Thanks for your advice.

I'll try dismantling now. There's nothing too sensitive on the machine AFAIK but there's no benefit in taking a risk of data being recovered from it

[#14]

@the_groundsman 

With a full format the data is not removed from the disk and can be recovered with the appropriate software tools and patience. Wiping involves writing over every data cell on the disk, ideally with 0s and1s. This is sometimes repeated several times when wiping sensitive data. This process can take many hours for just a single pass.

[#15]

I use Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN)

<https://dban.org/>