how do i wipe clean a hard drive?

Answer 1

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Answer 2

First off you can never wipe clean a hard drive. No matter what you do, data can alwase be pulled off a hardisk.
The only way to make sure data can be 100% irritravable is to drop the drive in melting hot liquid metal.

Even If you Fdisk and Format the drive 1, 10, 100 or infinate times you infomation can be read of lazer pens

Answer 3

There are many forms of wiping clean a hard drive.

For government use of classified material you need to write concurrent 1 then 0 then 1/0 millions of times.

For quick use Format then the drive name will do.

Many BIOS's have a format feature.

FDISK on a Windows/DOS system will do the trick.

On UNIX/LINUX mkfs

If you need to get rid of something for good search wipedisk on Yahoo.

Answer 4

Try the answers that involve inserting a disk (especially the Windows XP disc or a recovery disc if you have one). Don't try anything involving water or magnets as that is just the same as throwing your hard drive into the bin (and probably the rest of the computer). You just want to format not destroy the hard drive as a piece of hardware!

Answer 5

Use your copy of Windows XP and re-install it to your computer. You have to reformat but that will completely wipe it clean. And by the way defragging doesn't wipe it clean at all, it simply smooths out the empty parts of the drive.

Answer 6

There are countless procedures you may do it, yet in case you want the assistance to be wiped thoroughly then keep on with this procedure. a million. Use dban (Darik's Boot and Nuke). What this may do is wipe the problematic force with a random sequence of 0s and 1s. 2. purchase a torx screwdriver kit to open your problematic force. 3. skill down the workstation thoroughly and unplug it and then get rid of the problematic force. 4. Unscrew the metallic platters and get rid of them. 5. Sand the exterior of each and every platter thoroughly on both facet. 6. Rinse the platters 7. damage the platters with a hammer. 8. (non-compulsory) Take a blowtorch to the platters in simple terms to be secure. 9. (also non-compulsory) lease a degaussing wand and use that on the problematic force platters.

Answer 7

Why do you want to do that? I guess you have your reasons.
If your BIOS startup drive is set to Floppy then:
1. Put a MS-DOS startup diskette and type DIR to list the available commands
2. Type FDISK, to partition and format the drive

If your BIOS startup is set to CD-ROM then:
1. Put the startup CD (i.e. CD with formatting tools, like Windows XP), then restart
2. When your computer restart, it will ask you to Press any key to boot from CD, do so
3. Wait for all files to load, now, you're given options to partition your harddrive or format it.

You can also use other startup tools like DriveImage, or other 3rd party programs.

Answer 8

To completely wipe your hard drive of everything you need to do what is called "System Restore" depending on how old your computer is, most older model's come with a disc...otherwise i think you have to get it done professionally.

Answer 9

First, run and clear your PC of adware/spyware through any of your installed
cleaner, do a Tweak clean, or whatever you have available to remove old registry, then do a defragment and last do a disk clean up, do it exactly in order of suggestion, most of these comes available with windows xp.I us Tuneup Utilities for my reg. cleaner it also get some (MB) back for me. Usually these things do the trick for my PC.

Answer 10

Use a strong magnet!
Wipe the magnet over all the surface of the hard disk.

Warning will destroy all data and maybe the hard disk as well.

Answer 11

3 max low level formats will completely erase anything on a hard drive. Not even boys up at the NSA can get anything off of that.