Slightly OT I am trying to pass on a vintage laptop (IBM Thinkpad 380XD) and want to remove securely all my old data. It has win 98 installed and I have the upgrade CD and licence but not the original installation OS.
My preferred option is to scrub the whole disk and do a new installation. Searches have suggested however that the upgrade CD will not be sufficient although I can create a startup disk. The instructions I have seen suggest I also need the original cd.
My second option would be to scrub all the empty disk space and so I plan to use a live linux cd but how can I scrub just the empty space? Not yet found an straight forward answer so if anybody has time, I would appreciate suggestions.
This is true, April last year when I cleared my very old stuffs. I have three old desktop with 2 hard drive each. I dismantled it remove all the hard drive screws and use my big hammer.
Hard drives are really hard, so find an edge where to hammer. Put it on a hard metal sheet base or it can destroy your pavement.
The point is somebody wants to use or experiment with it, ie the hard drive and Win 98 system are supposed to be working. The hammer solution won’t work. The old data is not exactly secret but includes private correspondence and although I suspect of no interest it could include bank details and such.
Because the OS is so old I cannot find a suitable tool to wipe the “empty” drive space. Wiping the whole drive is easy ie. use dd. My problem then is installing a windows 98 system as I only have the upgrade CD, the original win 95 installation cd has been lost.
This is well OT but just thought I would ask.
Regards,
Alastair.
To wipe empty space, just create a huge file of zeros (or of garbage). Due to FAT file system limitations, you might need to create several such files. When you have filled the disk, then delete those files to get the space back.