Wipeout!

Hi Paul: I have an old laptop that I want to get rid of. But before doing so, I want to completely wipe the hard drive clean of any data I may have on there. Is there any product that can be used to completely wash the hard drive clean?

Dear Allister:

Yes. And you’re very smart to do it. Most people don’t realize that it takes almost zero effort for the bad guys to reconstruct the data on your hard drive, even if you’ve "deleted" it and "emptied" the trash. I won’t bore you with the reasons why that’s possible, but trust me: Data and identity thieves love it when people recycle their computers.

One option is to purchase the services of a hard-drive-shredding company that literally rips your hard drive to shreds with giant machinery. I like Data Killers -- datakillers.com -- and so does the Pentagon, the Social Security Administration and others. But for less money, and in a way that somebody else can use your discarded unit, you can purchase software that overwrites your hard drive again and again. The software places random, incomprehensible data in place of your old, sensitive data, so the drive can be reused but the information that was there before is unrecoverable.

One of my favorites: McAfee makes a feature called Shredder in three different security-software offerings -- McAfee Total Protection, McAfee VirusScan Plus and McAfee Internet Security.

Shredder will destroy your personal files, documents, applications and data so you have the peace of mind that no one can access them after you’ve recycled your laptop. Here’s a link: (http://home.mcafee.com/Default.aspx)