If a given machine won’t power up or otherwise won’t allow you to open the optical drive, you can simply remove that drive and destroy it right along with the hard drive. Simply open up the optical drive on every computer that has one and check for the presence of a disc.

Luckily, that should be easy enough to check. If you ever burned any of those “sensitive” files to a blank CD or DVD, you’ll need to check to make sure that disc isn’t still inside the optical drive in one of your computers. Rick’s answer: Karen, the answer to your question is a definite NO, with one possible exception.Īpart from the hard drive(s) or SDD(s), there are no other components inside a PC that permanently store any of your files.īut as mentioned above, there is one possible exception: an optical drive. I want to make absolutely sure no one will ever be able to find those pics. This is very important to me because when I was young and foolish I took some really personal pictures of myself and put them on a couple of my computers. What I mean is are there any other parts in there besides the hard drive that might have my files stored on them? My question is will removing the hard drive from a PC completely eliminate any possibility of someone finding my old files. I’ve always heard that you need to destroy a computer’s hard drive before you recycle it to prevent someone else from maybe getting your files. Question from Karen: I have several old computers in my basement that I want to recycle.

Remove the hard drive