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Before you get rid of that old computer, whether it is being donated, sold, or recycled, you should make sure that all of your personal information on the hard drive is permanently and securely erased. Simply reformatting the hard drive DOES NOT do a secure erase of your data. All it does is erases the File Allocation Table. This table is like a card catalog in a library. It simply records where the data is stored on the hard drive. Because the data is never erased with a typical format, anyone with special data retrieval utilities can gain access to your personal data. Since our computers many times store passwords and bank account information on them, it is imperative that we FULLY and SECURELY erase our hard drives before they are no long in our possession.

At MAC's Tech Hut / Micro Air Computers, for a nominal fee of $5.00, we will remove the hard drive and place it in our specially purchased hardware device that does a military grade Department of Defense secure erase of all data by writing ones and zeros on all areas of the hard drive. This ensures that your data is gone and cannot be retrieved.

For those of you with notebooks that have hard drives that require the entire notebook to be disassembled, (because your hard drive is mounted under the motherboard and not under an access door on the bottom of the notebook), your cost will be either:

• $25 - The notebook is being recycle and does not need to be put back together
• $45 - The notebook is being returned to you and reassembly is required.

Feel confident that your personal data won't fall into someone else's hands. Have your hard drive DOD erased before you get rid of that old PC.