How do you reformat a hard drive on an old computer?

Question

I have 5 old personal computers I have used over the years and am thinking about donating them to charity. I would like to completely wipe the hard drives clean, though, since they hold personal financial info and word files, etc. Since they are pretty old not, one is actually an old 386, I really don't know how to go about wiping them clean. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

u can format the hard if u r able to boot such computers. The utitlity to format is available in all operating systems. It would, however, be a better idea to delete the partition by using fdisk utitlity and then create it again. If u format then, there seems to be no possibility of a person seeing the data which was once stored on such disk by unformatting.

Answer 2

you will need to run your computer through a bootable floppy disk , to create a bootable floppy disk, this is what you have to do on windows ME or 98

CREATING A WINDOWS 98/ME BOOT DISK

Note: These steps are for users who have Windows 98 or Windows ME installed on the computer.

An excellent feature of Windows 98/ME is its boot diskette. Using Windows to create you a Windows 98 boot diskette will give you all the needed files as well as CD-ROM support. To create a Windows 98 boot diskette, click Start / Settings / Control Panel / double-click the Add Remove programs icon / click the Startup Disk and create disk.

Alternatively, to create a Windows 98 boot diskette manually from Windows, click Start / Shutdown and choose the option to restart the computer in a MS-DOS prompt. At the prompt, type:

cd\windows\command

Once at the C:\DOS directory, skip to copying files.


Then put the floppy in the floppydrive and restart your computer, after restart, your computer should boot from floppy, once you reach the command prompt, just type:
format c:
and hit enter.
it will ask for confirmation, just say yes.

Answer 3

you ought to be waiting to format it with that disk. you additionally can attempt using a Linux disk to format it. rather, that's in all likelihood the ideal theory in case you like to place in an OS and lost your restoration CDs. acquire Ubuntu, use it to partition and format the stress after which deploy.

Answer 4

befor you do that do you have .da windows cd ..and drivers to put back in da. system if no then da. pc will be no good for anyone if you dont reinstall da. windows os and drivers . to format it put in start up disk restart pc when at da. *A . promt type in

format c :\