Hi
I have acquired a number of back up floppy discs and CDs and do not want to have any one access any of the info. How do I dispose of them and not have someone open them to check the data.

Thanks for your question. These items should be recycled and at the same time you need to protect your data and identity. Just erasing an item is not good enough these days. With the proper tools and know how, someone can get the data back and who knows what they might do with it.

I have previously discussed destroying data on floppy discs and hard drives. You can individually do the items with free software which can be very time consuming.

A free piece of software you can download is Active@ Kill Disk Free Version (http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm). This works well for manually “wiping” the data yourself.

You can physically crack open the exterior of a floppy disc and remove the round media, cut up it up and then take it to a recycling center.

For around $100, you can purchase an item such as the erase-o-matic (http://erase-o-matic.com/) which will allow you to quickly render floppy discs, hard drives, cassette tapes, video tapes, As well as other types of magnetic media useless. The benefit to this is that you know that the data is truly destroyed and it’s safe to recycle.

For dealing with DVD’s and CD’s, you can get a paper shredder that also shreds DVDs and CDs.

The easiest and probably best option is to box up the items and send them to a service like Greendisk (http://greendisk.com). Check them out.

You can check with local recycling centers and see what their policy is regarding secure data destruction.

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