before i sell my computer how can i erase whats on my compute will putting in my recovery disk and reloading?

Question

windows will that clean and leave no ghosts as i don't want any one seen my bank details or my card nos am i best buying a new hard drive or is there a tool to use to clean my computer

Answer 1

Format your PC to wipe everything out and reload the recovery disk to put the windows back in. It will return to the state the computer was bought in. My computer crashed last summer and I formatted the hard drive and I was left with nothing. I had to put the windows back in, but things I put in myself were gone completely. Ghost copies of everything were gone as well.

Answer 2

Depends how worried you are about someone finding out your computer history.

Your recovery disk will 'overwrite' the old data, but it can still be accessed if whoever buys your computer wants it bad enough, or is just nosey like me.

If you are seriously concerned, you would need to use a 'Nuke' disk.
Because of the way the HDD and filesystem works when files are deleted, they are still there until they get overwritten and even then its still recoverable.
A nuke disk uses several different technicques to overwrite the data to make it more unrecoverable.
Heres a guide to help:
1) Make sure you have got all the data you want from the computer. Do this by burning it to cd/transfering it over a network. Whateva
2) Double check you have ALL the data you need.
3) Triple check. Your data is NOT coming back!
4) You will need a 'nuke' disk. Easiest way to obtain one (assuming ur PC bios boots cdroms and it is enabled in the bios) is to download, and Burn Ultimate Boot CD here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
5) Start the 'target' pc and insert the Ultimate Boot cd you just created. It should boot to a menu system. If not, reboot again, and if it still won't play, check in the bios that booting from cd is enabled and that the boot order is set CDROM then HDD.
6) Find Dariks Boot & Nuke in the menu. I think it's either in FIlesystem or Bootdisks.
7) Follow the instructions to secure erase your hdd. You want to use 7 overwrites if you get the option.
It will take a long time to complete depending on the drive and the computer e.g. overnight.
8) Once the nuke disks done, remove the UBCD, reboot and use ur Recovery CDs
HTH

Answer 3

Depends how secure you want to be. If you simply delete the data then it's still there and any teenager could get it back. If you do a restore with the original set-up disk most people couldn't see it, but a dedicated computer geek could get something back. You really have 2 options; Use a secure erase program like "Eraser" from "www.hiedi.ie" that overwrites the data many times with rubbish, or replace the hard drive and keep the old one as a spare or install it as a second drive in your new PC. You can get adaptors that allow a spare drive to be connected to a USB port, so you could use it as removable back-up.

Answer 4

hp, compaq dont continuously furnish working reload disks yet they do provide you reload optionds from the hp internet site as do acer and fujitsu, you ought to save the op reload sys disks with the unique workstation as this often times facilitates reload without the will for a licence extensive form, it assumes the unique one is present day and valid, this could and is used for fraudulent purposes international extensive ,

Answer 5

The only program I am aware of that should remove all the evidence is evidence eliminator
Evidence Eliminator - proven software performance at its extreme best."
Whatever your reason for using evidence eliminator, you are sure to find it more capable at getting rid of unwanted data than other products on the market - the software can purge all data, text, images (jpg, bmp etc..) e-mails etc. - which you would rather not have on your hard disk. Even if you think you have already deleted particular items using Windows Explorer - they are actually still there - not after Evidence Eliminator™ has cleaned up though!


go here
http://www.evidenceliminator.com/goto.html?OVRAW=evidence%20eliminator&OVKEY=evidence%20eliminator&OVMTC=standard

Answer 6

The most secure solution is to fit a new hard drive. There are several advantages to this:
- you know where your data is (peace of mind),
- it is cost-effective,
- the buyer gets whatever size hard drive they want and knows it will last for some time,
- swapping hard drives is quick and easy but erasing data is not and can take a long time,
- you can fit your old hard drive into your new machine and use it to store back-ups and it will be easy to transfer data to your new drive.
Don't forget that the new user will need their own operating system: they cannot use a copy of yours (it is licenced to you).

Answer 7

You basically just want a 'disk shredder'.

When you delete a file, all you are really doing is deleting the index to that file. The actual data still remains.

Ignore those respondents who mention FDISK. That won't delete anything properly. You want to use a utility that can control the hard disk at a low-level, and overwrite EVERY single byte on the disk with either a known value (such as zero), or a random value. I guess a random value would be better.

I've found one such product...I'm sure there are more!

http://www.disksh.com/en/

Answer 8

Don't bother Fdisk'ing it.
Data can still be recovered after doing it

For those giving me & john w the thumbs down, put a load of kiddy porn on your drive, fdisk, format , then pop it off to police station.

Fdisk & format DOES NOT rewrite securely!!!

Answer 9

If you are a dab hand at computing, you need to FDISK the hard drive to have total piece of mind. It wipes out everything. Then reinstall the basics. Dont trust anything else.

Answer 10

Apparently ghosts are always left, but there must be very few people who would be able to access anything once you have wiped it. I doubt any programme would remove them and of course you would have to pay and then would you trust it to have removed everything? I think you will be fine to wipe it and sell it
You are all paranoid!