

How To Wipe a Computer of All Your Personal Data

And also recycle it once you're done.

Broken computer hard drive
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Whether you're selling it, trashing it, or reusing it, that old computer of yours has a bunch of extremely private data stored inside.


This guide will take you through how to factory reset your computer or take a step beyond that by hiring a professional company to ensure your data has been destroyed (or smash up the computer yourself).

What Is a Factory Reset?

Portable Device
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A factory reset will definitely make it impossible for you to practically access programs or files on your computer. It's the nature of a factory reset: deleting anything that wasn't on the device after it came out of production.


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There are limitations, though. Factory resets leave data in the hard drive, so those pieces will live on until your hard drive is overwritten with new data. In short, the reset can give you a false sense of security. A complete erasure would actually look more like degaussing, or destroying the magnetic field around a hard drive to destroy its data, or actually smashing up the hard drive to bits.

Context is still key. If you're an everyday user that only really played games or finished school work on your computer, there's probably little risk in using a factory reset as your primary form of data wiping.


How To Factory Reset a Mac

  2. Log out of all services that you use.
    1. Choose disk utility > continue.
    2. Choose the correct startup disc and select erase.
    3. Choose MacOS Extended (Journaled) as the format.
    4. Click erase
  6. If you like, reinstall MacOS.

    How To Factory Reset a PC

    1. Repeat steps 1-3 as listed above.

      Why a Reset Sometimes Isn't Enough


      Inside your hard drive are a pair of rotating discs that sort of resemble a CD. These are called platters and they're the pieces of hardware that actually store all of those cat videos and family photos.

      The platter stores data onto its circular surface in chunks of 1s and 0s. The platters are usually ceramic, glass or aluminum and work like a record player. Centered on a spindle, the platter rotates and an electronic current reads and writes data onto the surface. Electronic components power the whole operation.

      When you delete data from the computer through a factory reset, the information is hidden from the computer, but still stored on the hard drive. If a hacker uses data forensics tools, he or she can find bits and pieces of those deleted files in the hard drive storage, making it possible to recover pretty much everything.

      There's much online debate about the best ways to completely destroy the data inside, but most solutions come down to water, hydrochloric acid, magnets or a blunt object you can smash them with easily.


      But smashing the platters is a different story. Just make sure you wear safety glasses, because the platters often break into tiny shards when smashed. Remember: the key to destroying the platter properly is ensuring that it can't spin. If it can't do that, the platter's contents can't be read.

      If you do want to reuse the hard drive, a factory reset should be your course of action. As stated above, be sure that you don't have any comprising information on the hard drive, first, because it could take a long time for new data to overwrite all of the old data on the drive.

      Solid State Drives

      Screenshot/Data Security, Inc.

      While there's a pretty decent chance that the old computer you're looking to nix has a hard drive disc, as it's an older, slower form of data storage, newer computers are fast adopting a new standard called a solid state drive, or SSD. These contain the microchips that you may picture inside of your phone against a green circuit board.

      More or less, a solid state drive is a larger and more sophisticated version of a flash drive. Information is stored on microchips and contains no moving platters. An SSD also doesn't have magnetic coatings like a hard drive disc. Rather, solid state drives have an embedded processor, its "brain," and interconnected memory chips that retain data.

      To destroy a solid state drive, you can't use a degausser, because there is no magnetic storage. Instead, you should physically destroy the device with something like the SSMD-2MM Solid State Media Disintegrator, which is something that professional data destruction companies should have. It essentially shreds up your hard drive until it's in no way recoverable.

      How To Tell If You Have a Solid State Drive?


      On Macbook: select the  menu > About this Mac > System Report > Hardware > Storage.


      Now...How Do I Recycle My Computer?


      After you've wiped your drive and smashed your computer, you must find a specialty recycling company that will take the parts. In other words, do not put glass shards, aluminum, and plastic from the device into your recycling bin. Sure, the trash person may pick it up, but it's just going to end up in a landfill because general recycling facilities don't have the capability to reuse these parts.

      Below are just a few places you can send your devices if they're in-tact and you've only done a software wipe. Some places will give you cash for the computer and other places will do the destroying for you.

      CyberCrunch: This Pittsburgh-based company specializes in data destruction, so if you've done a factory reset on your laptop but haven't bothered to destroy or at least take out your hard drive, these folks are definitely going to do that for you. In fact, it's part of their recycling process. Rates aren't disclosed on the website, so you'll have to make a phone call. Simply mail in your device and it will be securely recycled.

      Best Buy: As far as corporate companies that offer electronics recycling go, this is one of your best options, since Best Buy has a wide span of stores. The store will let you recycle three items per household per day for free and you can even check out their trade-in program to see if you'll get any money for it. So far, Best Buy has "responsibly disposed" of more than one billion pounds of electronic waste, which the company claims makes it the largest retail collection program in the country. The company is working with certified partners to reach two billion pounds.

      eStewards: Whether a full-fledged enterprise company or an individual consumer, this organization will help you find a local place to take your electronic junk as it's part of a global mission. Through its "Find a Recycler" tool, simply enter your country, state and zip code to find recycling shops nearby.

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