Before you dump those old computers, clear off the hard drives

Maybe you’ve upgraded your equipment or downsized your company—whatever the reason, if you’ve got some old computers, don’t sell, trash, or give them away until you’ve erased the data from your hard drives.

“It is fairly easy for someone else to recover files from used hard drives,” said James Wiebe, president/CEO of WiebeTech, a provider of data security and data mobility solutions. “As a test, we bought used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents.”

WiebeTech has introduced Drive eRazer™, an affordable (prices range from $100 to $200) hardware solution that does not require a computer and can completely remove data from a hard drive without destroying the drive itself.

If you shred your paper documents before discarding them (and you should!), you need to “shred” the data on your hard drives before discarding them as well. Wiebe pointed out, “As many people discover too late, trashing a file does not erase it from a hard drive.”

If you’re getting rid of old computers, it’s a worthwhile investment to make sure the drives are clean—failing to do so could be a very expensive mistake.

Note: This is not a paid endorsement; I have not been compensated by WiebeTech nor have I tried this product. I received a press release and thought the information was worth sharing.