Hard Drive

Changing your laptop’s hard drive or installing an additional one is a very simple task. Here we show you how to do it and what you should keep in mind.

1: Check your computer’s specs

Before buying anything, the first thing we have to do is check our computer’s specs. This is very important since, even if you’re going to replace your existing unit, you must check the compatibility of the models that you plan to install.

For that you must check the technical specifications of your laptop online, and closely examine the storage specs. This way you will know which units it supports, although it’s not always easy to find our model, even looking at several websites. This isn’t infallible, and there will be occasions where you will have to look for another solution.

Read more

To delete data from a hard drive properly, a rewriting process of all sectors is performed recursively. That is, the hard disk is completely rewritten repeatedly in a write loop, which makes the recovery of residual data to be an almost impossible task.

To delete data from a mechanical hard drive, the most appropriate tool, in our opinion, is DBAN (Darik’s Boot And Nuke). You can boot it from a bootable CD, or upload it to a pendrive with Unebootin or Yumi. You can start up from it and just have to wait to be able to choose the drive or drives that you want to safely erase. If you don’t want to complicate things, the standard method without any configuration already provides high quality erasing levels.

Simply select the drives that you want to delete and run the action. The standard method used is DOD Short. This method, designed years ago by the Department of Defense of the United States, uses a triple writing in each sector of the disk. First a character, its complementary character and then a definite a random character. Subsequently a check is made. It has been used for years and though some experts describe it as obsolete, it certainly is a fairly reliable method for the type of information that a home user would leave on its hard drive.

Read more