Erasing information from a computer hard drive.....?

Question

I am selling an old computer and I do not want the purchaser to view any information I 've put into the computer. I don't want to keep any information for myself. I just don't want anybody to be able to see my information.

How do I go about erasing or removing information from my hard drive?

Answer 1

Follow this procedure - HOWEVER, it will remove every single file on the computer. Windows, everything.

Put in a floppy disk that you don't need.
Double click on My Computer
Right-click on A:\ and go to Format
Place a check to format the floppy with system files, select 1.44MB floppy at the top and then format it.

Restart your computer and it will boot to the floppy.

Once it loads and you get a C:\, type: format C: /q

Once it's done, it'll ask for a label. Just hit Enter.

You're done. Process takes all of 2 minutes and it removes every file from your computer.

Answer 2

There's three methods for this.

1. The normal persons method: Simply put your windows CD in the cd tray and restart your computer. You need to get yoru computer to boot to that cd. It will run you through a few screens and then you'll have the ability to "DELETE" your "PARTITION". That's the one you want. Once you delete the partition, you can let windows install over it again and should be good to go.

2. The paranoid person's method: Because the above method can still leave traces of data that could be located by someone that REALLY wants your info and knows what they're doing. The paranoid way would be remove the hard drive from the computer, put it in another computer as a second hard drive and use a software utility to write "0's" and/or "1's" over the whole drive. That would guarantee the data could not be recovered.

3. The psychotic paranoid person's method: Take the hard drive out and smash it with a hammer, then hold it up to giant speaker magnets, set it on fire. Then travel to "Middle Earth" and sneak past the Eye of Mor'dor...throw it into the molten core and you should be good.

I hope these method's have helped you and maybe even provided a laugh. If you need more info on this, feel free to email me and I'll help you a bit more.

Answer 3

The easiest way to erase information from a hard drive is to format the drive.

You can do this on the same computer if you have a boot disk to use to boot the computer in the dos prompt mode.

After the computer is booted in dos, type in format and the letter of the drive you want to format (usually C:)

If you don't have a boot disk you can install the drive into another computer and format it there.

A professional in forensic data recovery could possibly still recover data from the drive. To reduce this possibility format the drive 2 or 2 times.

If you would like to have a boot disk let me know and I can send you the files needed and you can put then on a 2 1/4 floppy and use it to boot the drive.

Answer 4

You can either totally wipe your hard drive and re-install your operating system, or delete all of your info and then use a program called "Eraser" to clean the disk.

REMEMBER: After you delete something, it's not really gone, even after you empty the recycle bin. Any file recovery program can get the files back unless you erase the free space on your disk. The safest way is a wipe and re-install.

Answer 5

i recommend DBAN: http://dban.sourceforge.net/

it's a free download that makes a boot disk which will boot up and completely obliterate all of your data. without going into too much detail, (you can read the links i post if you want) the secret to destroying data is writing over it with different patterns until it is no longer readable. After "deleting" something from your disk, the data is still on the disk until that part is overwritten, which is how data-recovery programs work. Formatting or deleting partitions does not 100% remove access to data.

linkfest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutmann_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeletion
http://www.zdelete.com/dod.htm

Answer 6

I like Jeff J's method #3 because it is effective. But more because it is fun. Only thing I would add is to take it out to the woods with a shotgun and shoot at it too. If your lucky enough to have a machine gun that would be even better. However if you don't have a gun, place it on a train track for it to be run over. Oh and make sure you have parental supervision when you do this.

Answer 7

If you still got time and the reinstallation cd or partition then do it this way. Go find your CD. Go to this link and follow these steps. It will restore the computer to the orginal state. Just like you just took the comp out of the box and setting it up again.
http://www.windowsxpprofessional.windowsreinstall.com/installxpcdoldhdd/indexfullpage.htm

Answer 8

you could delete the partition (boot disk, fdisk)
i do know there are programs that will write over the entire drive over and over again, but ive never used them
of coarse, if you are really paranoid, you could just remove the hard drive and either keep it or destroy it (try borrowing an acetylene torch)

Answer 9

You could format but it will deffinantly remove the OS(windows, linux, whatever). However, unless you do a full format, some files may be able to be recovered.

Answer 10

first go 2 my computer then click on the file that you want to erase from then right click then click on delete.If that doesn't work then you can go to add or remove programs