If your computer equipment is not functional and beyond repair, you can have Safety & Risk Management recycle your computer equipment for you. Contact Safety & Risk Management at X6888 to schedule pickup. At this time they are only accepting Computers and Monitors for disposal.

For all of your computers  (e.g. tower, desktop, laptop)  complete a State PAMS-4 Disposal Form.  Property Management can send this to you or it’s available on the MSU website at http://www2.montana.edu/policy/property/images/PAMS-4.pdf.

Please remember to remove your property control tags or other identification tags from the equipment before you dispose of it. Take note of the MSU tag number from the computer case or the serial number if the tag is missing. For monitors, list the quantities and make of monitor. Send the tags along with the form to MSU Property Management.

If you have any computers that are Pentium I (or low-end Pentium II) and below that still work, and you want to dispose of and know of someone that would like to use them, they can have those and any working monitors. The hard drives still need to be wiped clean but the original operating system can be re-installed (or the operating sys cd rom/disks that came with the system).

If you have a high end Pentium II or better in working condition, the hard drive still needs to be wiped clean but call Property Management at X5504 to pick them up for reuse on campus.

You spent a lot of time and effort, guarding your files and data from crashes, corruption, viruses, internet bandits and the like. Now you want to surplus the machine. When you surplus your machine, you are giving it to a stranger. You owe it to yourself, your department, and the University to make sure that sensitive files and other personal and business information are removed from your hard drive before you surplus your machine.

Did you know that your operating system will often store your password(s) on the hard drive? What about the other files on the hard drive that belong to you or your department or the university? Do you keep lists of passwords or other confidential information on your machine? Consider that your Email, your address books, your contact information for others, your projects, your databases, all probably reside on your computer. Did you know that files that are simply deleted from the hard disk are generally easy to recover in full or in part, even if your operating system requires a password to log in! Think of how easy it would be to get them if they were not deleted at all.

The following steps are intended to help you prepare a machine to be surplussed, by overwriting all data and free space on each functioning hard drive attached to the machine. These instructions are intended for machines that are still functioning properly. If your computer is malfunctioning and you cannot access one or more of the hard drives, then before you surplus the machine you may want to have someone remove the hard drive from the machine and use other methods to insure that data cannot be retrieved from the drive. The following steps may or may not work for servers (with special hard drive configurations such as RAID) or some machines with SCSI type hard drives.

These instructions will not clean your hard drives to the DoD 5220.22-M standard. For computers capable of booting from a floppy to DOS there is a utility available that will overwrite the data on the hard drive called killdisk. For a computer that is capable of booting from a CD use the cdrom iso. If you have highly sensitive material that requires DoD 5220.22-M high level sanitizing contact the Help Desk at 994-1777 or opermail@montana.edu to provide you with assistance.

Click on the following link to download killdiskfloppysetup.exe that will create a bootable floppy disk with the killdisk program ready to run on boot up from your floppy drive.

If your computer is not capable of accessing the hard drive you can contact the Help Desk at 994-1777 or opermail@montana.edu to provide you with assistance or create a Help Desk Case to have the data removed by Hardware Support Services at the standard hourly rate.

For DOS or Windows (all):
Consolidated PC instructions (good for printing)

1. Backup all files you want to keep before continuing.
2. Boot from a floppy diskette that will recognize fat 32 partitions. Click here to learn how to make your own bootable floppy.
3. Delete all partitions, and create a single partition to span the entire hard drive. Click here for more detailed instructions.
4. Format the new partition, using the “unconditional” formatting option. Click here for more details.
5. Remove all floppies and CDROMS from the machine. Tips
6. Surplus the machine. Reminder

For Macintosh:
Consolidated Macintosh instructions (good for printing)

1. Backup all files you want to keep before continuing.
2. Boot from your Macintosh System CDROM. Click here for more detailed instructions.
3. Locate the Hard Disk formatting utility.
4. Formatting Utilities
   1. Recommended: Using 'Drive Setup' to write zeros to your hard drive(s).
   2. Alternate: Using 'Apple HD SC Setup' (or similar) to initialize to your hard drive(s).
   3. Sub-alternate: 'Last Ditch' erase procedures.
5. Remove all floppies and CDROMs from the machine.Tips
6. Surplus the machine.Reminder

If you are having trouble with this page...you probably can't read this and any contact information I put here would be useless.

Return to regular view	Text-only	Updated: 2/13/2007