how do you manually erase your hard drive?

Question

i am getting rid of an old PC and want to clear it out

Answer 1

format actually just removes the pointers to where the files are, but they remain there until you overwrite them

if you go get this thing http://dban.sourceforge.net/ and create a bootable floppy or cd and then boot your computer to that disk and type autonuke, then it overwrites your had drive several times with random data and it's unrecoverable by anyone that doesn't recover data for a living


PS: I just read the other posts and killdisk is the only other thing I would recommend, but I seem to remember that it's free version has some limitations whereas dban doesn't

Answer 2

definatly use a program that writes over the data, like samual adams said, that is very good advice. I use hdscrubber. here is an address that outlines the government standard for both clearing and sanitizing drives. http://www.zdelete.com/dod.htm
pay attnetion to the sanitizing part, this is a standard that the government deems acceptable for the data to never be recovered, short of destroying the hard drive, which is the less time consuming way.
You could also just remove the current drive. If you are giving your sytem away or selling it and want it to have a hard drive you can usually find them on sale 160 gigs for $40, it would also make a good selling point.

Answer 3

If you would like to erase and wipe all information from your harddrive, I reccommend you use Active@ KillDisk. This powerful and compact DOS software allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. This is security software for unrecoverable data elimination for any computer capable of booting in DOS mode from floppy drive. It uses access to the drive's data on a physical level via BIOS bypassing logical drive structure organization, thus it does not matter operating systems and file systems located on the machine, it can be DOS, Windows 95 / 98, Windows NT / 2000 / XP, Linux, Unix for PC. Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody.

Please note: If the CIA or FBI is after you, destroy the hard drive. It is possible to recover data even if it has been erased and written over many times.

Answer 4

Hi. The command is "format c:" at the command prompt. But this leaves data on the disk that most competent computer geeks could recover. The only real way to prevent data from being recovered is to destroy the drive.

Answer 5

If you are dumping it - just put a hammer through the hard drive. However if you are passing it on to someone - download a fully working trial version of Window Washer. It will overwrite everything you have deleted with random 0's and 1's.

http://www.webroot.com/consumer/downloads/

Who dares wins

Answer 6

There are programs that "erase" the harddrive, but if you want to be really "manual", open it up and use sandpaper.

Answer 7

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/smallbusiness/issues/technology/protect/harddrive.mspx