How to wipe a Hard Drive?

[maxgomes]

I'm wanting to sell my PC, but how do I wipe it to the point that there is no recoverable sensitive data on it anymore? Also, does anyone know where I should be pricing it at?

I have a gtx 1080, i7 4790k, 1000w PSU by Corsair, h60 liquid cooling(closed) on the cpu, 16 GB of RAM(I think the speed is around 1800-2300 MHz, ddr3) the motherboard chipset is LGA 1150 so it's kind of dated but it does have an m.2 slot for a mini SSD. Also it has 3 chassis fans that keep it fairly cool. Also it runs off of Windows 10. I'm thinking 1000$. Is that too high or low?(I'm not trying to sell it here, that would be against the rules, I'm just asking opinions on the price point)

[DaveLembke]

Best method is buy someone elses hard drive or a low cost hard drive and install that into your computer and install the OS to that and then sell it and retain your hard drive as the best method to someone not ever getting your data.

Newegg for example sells refurbished hard drives for as low as around $9.99 at times. I have bought these drives for projects where I have a system with removable drive bay so 1 computer can act as many depending on what drive is in the bay, as well as to retain my drives and my data under my control when selling or giving away my computers to others when I am done with them.

Look at ebay and parts out what you have and see what bids are happening for hardware as a best measure of what the actual used value is. Add the values together to get a ball park figure of what people are willing to spend and then you will know what its worth. That is the method I take. I have had some stuff before that I was going to sell and then looked at ebay and amazon to see what the components were going for before and been like wow... the bottom fell out I will just keep it, or maybe its not that bad and there is a good demand still and sell it to get a better part of what I originally spent for the hardware back. Video cards I have found have had an interesting used value as some are buying top of the line high end cards to farm bitcoin or other cyber currency and when a better video card comes out and the ROI isn't there anymore, they sell off these video cards that aren't that old but in some cases saturate the used video card market causing prices to be cheaper than you expect due to supply and demand and when there is too many of them and they are each undercutting the other guy to try to unload them to recoup most of their money to pay for the newer cards, it can cause an interesting market for used video cards. All other hardware has a more constant decline in value. The market will tell you what you have and what you can get by looking at what others are selling stuff for in which bids from multiple sources can use used as a indicator as to what people are biting at for prices.

[Geek-9pm]

DaveLembke,
Nice post. I was going to say that, but you said it better.
Replacement hard drives are now dirt cheap.

[Mark.]

@max,sadly, the $1000'ish price tag is way too high.  just a stab in the dark here, but something under $600 would be your sweet spot.
we never get back anywhere near the price we paid, and punters want used things dirt cheap or they'll go elsewhere or just buy new.

also, if you have any sort of sensitive data on the drive, with enough time, effort and the correct software, a lot a data can be gleamed off a drive.
sure, they won't get that whole Excel tax spreadsheet you had, or the naked vacation shots of you and the wife on the beach, but they'll extract bits and pieces - enough to potential be harmful.
why not put in a SSD, newly install Win10 and sell it for a slightly higher price with "new SSD" as your 'selling point of difference'.
keep the old drive then for backups.

[patio]

I still have every HDD i have owned...i buy new and swap it in for a re-sale.

[Mark.]

same here, although I have recently (finally) bought myself to destroy the IDE ones I had in stock. 

[DaveLembke]

Poor IDE drives... I have destroyed some of the older IDE drives too for their super strong magnet sets. I have 4 of them on my fridge now holding up my daughters art work and they dont fall off the fridge like regular refrigerator magnets, you have to tug hard to move or remove them.  ( Warning: It hurts when you get the magnet pair too close together and you get your skin pinched between them... THEY ARE STRONG!! )

Other benefit of the magnets from hard drives is when you lose a black steel laptop screw on a carpeted floor and its not in plain sight. With magnet in hand move it on the carpet around the area where you were working and ( CLING ) ... There it is!

On my profile the "Inventor of the Magna-Broom 3000" is what my boss at a prior job called a broom I made with strong hard drive magnets on the end of it. We had grey with black patterned carpet in a large IT office and screws etc would always drop and then where the heck did it go. Get the magna-boom 3000 and sweep the floor with hard drive magnets and ( CLING ) there it is... and about 8 other screws and washers that dropped that we decided not to use the magna-boom 3000 for because they were common screws that we had a cookie tin full of. 

We kept the magna-boom 3000 away from floppies and other media that was magnetic sensitive! 

[patio]

I ordered 1 approx 3 years ago...still hasn't arrived...

[Term_ite]

Well Dave, you've just cleared up a mystery that thousands thought about but were too afraid to ask. I was one of them. Now I know what the Magna-Broom is.

[DaveLembke]