Shut down your old computer?

I want to shut down or dismantle my old computer because I only use my laptop. Can I simply format all hard drives after I have made a backup of my most important data on an external hard drive? I would like to leave everything to a friend, a computer tinkerer.

Yes. You should possibly check whether the backup worked, i.e. All important files are on the hard drive.

I've already done that, luckily I was so smart😅

Yes will work. However, formatting does not overwrite the data - it can therefore be restored. You have to be careful, depending on how critical they are.

Well then.

When it comes to data security, simply formatting the hard drives is not enough. The data can then be recovered by very simple means. You don't need more than basic knowledge and Google.

I once accidentally formatted one of my drives. Can be completely restored since the data is still available on the disk and has in principle only been released for overwriting.

Either destroy it, overwrite the hard disk several times with special programs, keep the disks or trust your hobbyist friend.

If you want to be on the safe side, format the hard drives and overwrite them with random numbers several times. Under Linux with dd if = / dev / urandom of = / dev / …