2006-11-18 08:00:10 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Monitors
reformatting it will "erase" everything on it, however it will not "destroy" the information on there. IE, it could in theory still be retrieved by a skilled person with the right tools. There are 'scrubber' software packages available that overwrite data with a bunch of trash data, then erase and reformat the drive. This is still not perfect, but its a lot safer if you have something like social sec numbers, credit card numbers, etc and you are about to donate your computer to the local prison for prisoners to use:P
2006-11-18 08:10:46 · answer #1 · answered by Dan W 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well you can just format it by putting in the Windows CD and rebooting - boot to the CD and as you go through the steps it'll ask you to format. Do that and it's clean. However, if you don't want to put Windows on it after that you'll need to plug this drive into another computer as a slave or external drive (in an enclosure) and use the other computer to format it.
Then there are utilities out there that can do all this as well. Good luck.
2006-11-18 08:09:35 · answer #2 · answered by GrayTheory 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I use a program called wipedrive, made by white canyon software. www.whitecanyon.com . never used killdisk, but it may work just as well especially if its free. it will completely erase the drive and render all the data non-recoverable. it costs about 30 bucks
2006-11-18 15:43:44 · answer #3 · answered by alandi 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
run KillDisk. That will wipe out everything.
2006-11-18 08:08:06 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Try this, I have used it many times and it works great!
http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
2006-11-18 09:30:08 · answer #5 · answered by CommanderJim 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
format it
2006-11-18 08:02:00 · answer #6 · answered by bsmith13421 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋