Would you buy a computer tower if

[shortbun]

the seller warned that the previous owner had collected porn but it had been wiped clean? Interesting question, eh? I told him I thought he should trash it.

 

[Jennasis]

Yes. If the hard drive was wiped (reformatted) then there is no longer porn on it.

ETA...I'd wipe it myself to be sure...or rather I'd have Dh do it, since I'm not-so-good with tech stuff.

 

[Witch Mountain]

I would probably put a new hard drive in it.

Wiping a hard drive doesn't necessarily take everything off. Depending on how it was done, it could just merely replace the first character of a file name with a wild card character.

 

[locolala]

Depending on what the rest of the computer contained, yeah probably. You can get a new hard drive pretty cheap.

 

[Charade]

There are many free DOD level hard drive wipe utilities out there. Unless the drive is really old (and possibly ready to fail), I'd just do the wipe. But you'd have to then install a new copy of the OS and they aren't that cheap.

 

[low-key]

yes

 

[happygirl]

Yes, my hubby could fix it

 

[Lorem Ipsum]

yes

Did you read carefully? It has been cleaned.

 

[FireDancer]

I'd wipe it myself or just trash the hard drive and put in a new one. They are pretty cheap. Just to be safe I'd also re-flash the BIOS but that is most likely unnecessary.

 

[locolala]

I certainly don't think trashing it is the right option, you can pick it apart and sell the guts for a pretty decent price. I'm assuming it's just a basic no frills computer with only the onboard video card, but still it'd be worth it to try selling it.

 

[plutotek]

I wouldn't worry so much about the tower....

....I would definitely get a new keyboard, though

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

Did you read carefully? It has been cleaned.

you can get an amazing amount of information from hard disk drives that have been "cleaned"

like a PP said, most cleaning programs only wipe the first bit of a file. there are programs available that will search for the file signature and replace that bit. and surprise, the file is back!

and re-formating it is a bad idea, the data can be recovered by "unformating it" and recovering, using 'tools" readily available.

just replace the HDD and re-install the OS from the recovery disc

 

[shortbun]

uh, huh. At that point, would you just buy a new tower? This comes from an older DELL. Still has a drive for those square disks/floppies? I passed anyway because I've heard wiped hard drives can be not successfully clean. It kind of creeped me out that he mentioned it; I was thinking he was trying to cover himself in case I found some porn. It was a yard sale item.

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

uh, huh. At that point, would you just buy a new tower? This comes from an older DELL. Still has a drive for those square disks/floppies? I passed anyway because I've heard wiped hard drives can be not successfully clean. It kind of creeped me out that he mentioned it; I was thinking he was trying to cover himself in case I found some porn. It was a yard sale item.

thats smart.

especially if its an older system.

of course you could have got it, replaced the HDD, and turn the other one into the police with the explanation of what the previous owner told you!

 

[Dax]

i'd wipe it myself or just trash the hard drive and put in a new one. They are pretty cheap. Just to be safe i'd also re-flash the bios but that is most likely unnecessary.

this!

 

[FlightlessDuck]

Legal porn or illegal porn?

You can use a secure delete program like sdelete from SysInternals, which will completely overwrite the memory location of files marked for deletion.

Or, as someone else said, you can just get a new hard drive.

If it's legal porn, I don't see a problem at all. But then, if it was legal porn, I don't know why it would have been mentioned.

 

[RitaE]

Legal porn or illegal porn?

You can use a secure delete program like sdelete from SysInternals, which will completely overwrite the memory location of files marked for deletion.

Or, as someone else said, you can just get a new hard drive.

If it's legal porn, I don't see a problem at all. But then, if it was legal porn, I don't know why it would have been mentioned.

That's what I was going to ask.
I mean if it's just everyday run of the mill pictures --- I really wouldn't bother to do much more than a restore.

And if it's illegal porn, that hard drive should probably be turned over to the police.

 

[heatherleigh]

No, I would not.

 

[marmalade]

I wouldn't worry so much about the tower....

....I would definitely get a new keyboard, though

 

[Greenepona]

IMHO, If you do a DOD (Department of Defense) level wipe, you shouldn't have any issues... I use a program called drive scrubber. Its currently running on my laptop, time spent: 24 hours for a 150GB hard drive I think its thorough. There is another higher level wipe, which takes even longer and wipes several more times in different orders etc. Description is below:
"Government and Military Compliant
DriveScrubber was built to meet the strict protocols of high-demand, mission-critical government and military entities. It meets and exceeds not only the U.S. Department of Defense 5220.22-M disk-sanitizing standard, but also all known government and military specs."