I've been debating what to do with my Dell Dimension 4500 for several days now. Since it works fine and the Sony 19 inch CRT monitor is still excellent, I hate to just trash it through a recycle program like Best Buy's. I went on ebay to look at what these computers are going for. Yikes. With the monitor, I'd be lucky to get $75. Too much trouble.
So, next I thought about finding some internal hard drive to external conversion kit. The HD is the Maxtor 6L080J4 80gig 3.5 inch IDE drive, but not sure about what is needed to convert it. Probably, again, for the novice, too much trouble.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_details.php?lang=en&model=MAXTOR%206L080J4
So, I looked into the idea of totally wiping the drive and donating to a charity. Local school won't take it since they didn't buy it. I compared DBAN with Blancco and it looks like Blancco offers a free download. Haven't gotten that far yet. Has anyone tried the Blancco free download of their erasure software and can tell me how it works. I'd sure like to get on with getting rid of my excellent performing Dell Dimension 4500. It's just slow as molasses in January these days and it's maxed out with 2 sticks of 512 ram and WinXP.
http://www.blancco.com/campaign/dban/
Hi Vandyu,
I haven't used that program, but KillDisk is frequently recommended.
My suggestion would be to place a Craig's list or Freecycle ad and donate your 4500. I've got an old 4550 that is about to be given away.
Please post back and let me know if you need more help.
Osprey
Thanks, Osprey4, for your reply. I'll look into killdisk. Still hoping someone might share their experience with Blancco. Do you have any personal experience with any program? On another post, DBAN was suggested and after looking at Blancco's ad comparing the two, I was thinking their program might be better--if it's truly free for trial basis. Since I'm not wiping out a whole set of hard drives, I'd just like one free use of an effective program.
I just looked over the killdisk free download. Obviously, they'd like to sell their professional package that meets DOD and other more stringent guidelines. Do you think the single pass zero is sufficient? I've got the usual income tax records, personal history, family history, resumes and password kinds of things on my hd. Nothing earth shattering and I will change my pass codes for banking and credit cards. Would like to help out a charity and not trash the computer/monitor set, but don't want to fall prey to ID theft as much as possible nowadays.
Yes, I think that should be fine.
Thanks, again, Osprey4.