It's probably a Pentium 3 400mhz or better. This will run Internet Explorer, MS Word and most programs fine. What it will not be is an advanced multi-media or game machine.
On occasion computer hand me downs hurt people more than they help, this would be a machine that would help someone.
You may be worried about leaving personal data on the drive, if you run the command FDISK and then format the drive and install an operating system you will be completely protected.
This machine, running with an installed operating system, would likely be welcome in many students bedrooms.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: jombl,
Posts: 2274 | Location: Glen Ellyn, Il | Registered: September 23, 2003
Originally posted by jombl: It's probably a Pentium 3 400mhz or better. This will run Internet Explorer, MS Word and most programs fine. What it will not be is an advanced multi-media or game machine.
On occasion computer hand me downs hurt people more than they help, this would be a machine that would help someone.
You may be worried about leaving personal data on the drive, if you run the command FDISK and then format the drive and install an operating system you will be completely protected.
This machine, running with an installed operating system, would likely be welcome in many students bedrooms.
Yes, it runs fine. Web surfing is good. Word and excel (although nothing too complex) is good. PPT is fine unless too many graphics. If possible, I'd run with Windows 98 over XP.
FYI: there is now technology that allows recovery of certain data even if the drive is reformatted. It is hard to do, complex and expensive, but it can be done.
My concern isn't about any data on the drive, though. I just want the drive to use to backup some other information.
I just had a Western Digital HD go bad and am in the process of getting a replacement from them as the drive is slightly less than a year old. While trying to diagnose the problem with the drive I downloaded their LifeGuard tools. One of the tools will write zeros to your HD thereby actually wiping out any data (as opposed on only deleting the index entry).
Originally posted by SoEllynGuy: I just had a Western Digital HD go bad and am in the process of getting a replacement from them as the drive is slightly less than a year old. While trying to diagnose the problem with the drive I downloaded their LifeGuard tools. One of the tools will write zeros to your HD thereby actually wiping out any data (as opposed on only deleting the index entry).
There are a lot of tools that will overwrite a hard drive to make them "safe" but very few of them are 5220.22-M compliant. This standard is issued by the DOD (IIRC) and specifies how the drive needs to be overwritten to make sure it is unrecoverable. This requires multiple passes writing. To do this thoroughly takes a significant amount of time (probably days on this old machine) and, even still, may not be 100% complete.
For all you geeks out there, is a pretty good list of articles and approaches on this topic HERE
Again, my issue isn't that I have top secret information on the drive that will compromise national security if it falls into the wrong hands. I want to keep the drive to use it.
