HDD Eraser

[flowertot]

I am in the process of looking at putting computer up for sale. How do I ensure that all contents of the HDD are completely erased i.e. personal information, etc other than just doing a System Restore as I know that doesn't remove all your personal data from the drive.

Can you buy a disk that erases hard drives, or is there a download that can do the same??

Any help gratefully appreciated

[robglysen]

http://www.harddriveeraser.org/

I have a program that can unformat hard drives as long as nothing else has been written to them, just incase I accidentally wipe one.
I could easily buy some ebay hard drives, unformat them and have a right good gander at the contents. But i'm not that nosey : )
Deleting a file only removes the file header and the first letter of the file name.

[Bobinovich]

Unfortunately, because the above program works from within Windows, it cannot therefore erase the Windows partition and, as many users also keep their data on the same partition as Windows, it will not do the required job. It will however work if you can connect your hard drive as a slave in another Windows based computer.

This package (http://www.killdisk.com/) allows you to create a bootable floppy or CD which will do the job.

[RecQuery]

I've used DBAN (http://www.dban.org/download) from time to time, just burn it as an image to a CD and it should fairly automatic, if you're really paranoid remove the HD afterwards take it apart and smash the contents then buy a new HD for the computer you're going to sell.

[EDDIE]

I've used DBAN (http://www.dban.org/download) from time to time, just burn it as an image to a CD and it should fairly automatic, if you're really paranoid remove the HD afterwards take it apart and smash the contents then buy a new HD for the computer you're going to sell.
Totally agree with u smash the hard drive is a 100% guarnteed if you want piece of mind

[andrew.bowles30]

I personally like to use DBAN which is fairly straight forward to use and gives DOD standard erasing of the HDD