Tips for Donating a Computer

• Donate

Goodwill Industries encourages businesses as well as individuals to donate their new and used computers.  But there are some things you should know to make the donation process a smooth one and, most importantly, protect yourself from identity theft. 

Be sure to check with your local Goodwill to find out if computer donations are accepted. To protect your privacy, Goodwill recommends that donors remove all data from a computer hard drive before donating a computer, with the exception of the operating system. View additional information about safely donating a computer from Microsoft. To download free software to aid in purging your computer, please refer to the following links:

Freeware Windows Disk Cleaning Software
(available at Shareware.com)

• Eraser
• Active@ Kill Disk: Hard Drive Eraser
• Disk Cleaner
• Sure Delete
• BCWipe (shareware)

Active@ Eraser 4.1.0.3
(available at download.com)

A comprehensive data destruction toolset, which includes Windows and DOS applications, for keeping your PC secure from undesired data recovery.

Norton SystemWorks Premiere
(available at symantec.com)

Optimize your computer experience. Back up, maintain, and repair your system with advanced protection.

Macintosh Disk Cleaning Software

• Wipe Info feature in Norton Utilities
• iClean
• SuperScrubber

Secure Hard Drive erase tips for Macintosh users
- by Mike Romo at Symantec

For OS 9 users (usually older Macs released before 2001)

1. Boot off System Software CD (included with the Mac)
2. Find "Drive Setup" application, usually in "Utilities" folder
3. Under "Initialization Options" select "Zero out all data"
4. Select the hard drive you wish to initialize and then click "initialize".

For OS X users

1. Boot off Mac OS X System Software install CD (included with the Mac)
   - This CD can also be used to erase most older Mac OS 9 Macs as well
2. Under the "Installer Menu" select "Disk Utility"
3. After the Disk Utility window opens, select the hard drive/volume you wish to erase and then click the "Erase" tab
4. In Panther (Mac OS X 10.3): Click Options (optional) to choose a more secure method of erasing the disk ("Zero all data" and "8 Way Random Write Format").

In Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4): select the drive you wish to erase and click "security options".  You will have several erase options, each with an explanation.  The 35-Pass Erase is the most secure — and will take several hours!

Additionally, in both 10.3 and 10.4, when you empty the trash in the Finder, you can alternately select "Secure Empty Trash" from the Finder menu, which will make it basically impossible to recover or undelete erased files.