how can i fully wipe a hard drive.

[honey33]

Hi can anyone please give me the site for a free download so that i can fully wipe my hard drive so i can sell my old computer on..As i dont want to think of someone hacking it and trying to get my old personal data. I know how to reformat a hard drive but been told that doesnt fully get rid of everything..so anyone no the propper way of doing it and hopefully a free way of doing so would be great.thanks in advance for your help

[Mosaic]

The only way to totally prevent data being recovered from your hard drive is as follows:

disconnect computer from power supply
earth yourself and remove the hard drive

wrap in a dry duster or cleaning rag and place on a hard surface that will not mark

avert eyes and hit the bundle repeatedly with a hammer.

[Celticv11]

Delete all your files. They will still be there but the space they occupy will be marked as available. Check how much available space on your hard drive. Populate the space with any old rubbish, music, old movies, answerbank files as large as possiblethese will replace your confidential info and make it irrecoverable

[ChuckFickens]

If you plan on selling the drive/computer
http://www.dban.org/

If you're planning on disposing of it, for laptop drive do as mosaic says, for desktop drives you'd be better off drilling a few holes through it.

[percypineapple]

i may be wrong, but if you borrow a windows xp disc, and load it, it will give you the option to " Format" and wipe the lot. I also think that you can Format without the disc, no doubt chuck will put us right.

[imagcq]

goggle hard drive erasers there are one or two for free download
worked for me

[honey33]

CHUCK ive downloaded a prog caller eraser from cnet website would that be ok as it looks simple to use...also looked on the site you gave and couldnt work out wich bit i needed to download sorry having a blonde hair day toda... tahnks all for your help

[ChuckFickens]

eraser is acceptable if used correctly, the problem with it is, if you only wipe the free space on the drive you can never be 100% sure what you've left behind, wiping the entire disk is far safer.

The download you need on the site I linked to is
https://sourceforge.n...2.6_i586.iso/download

You then have to burn it onto a CD (using an ISO burner, just double click the file if yoou have windows7)

Once you've got it on CD you'll need to boot the computer with the drive you want to wipe from the CD and then follow the instructions to wipe the drive totally.

(this will remove everything, including windows)

[honey33]

thanks chuck so do i just now put cd in reboot select my cd rom drive and then it will tell me what i want to delete as in the c drve hard drive as it all one drive.is that correct ..basically same as reformat on pc were u select to boot from cd rom drive and then follows the insturctions is that right

[ChuckFickens]

Yeah pretty much, it's been a long time since I've used it but you'll have to select which drive you want to wipe, how you want to wipe it (just leave it default) and then I think it's F10 to start wiping it. It may take a few hours BTW.

[Hugh Spencer]

Can the hard drive be fitted to your new computer?

[HowardKennitby]

^

I would think about Hugh's suggestion. Sell the computer without drive. Either fit your drive in new computer as a slave or mount it in a caddy and use as an external drive.