Best FREE Erase your HDD?

[SiHawk]

Can someone please suggest a SAFE, EASY, and Prooblem Free method of NOT erasing the OS........but most if not everything else on my present 'puter. I have built a new 'puter and would like to prepare this 'puter for my neighbor to use in her business.
Would it work well enough for this to just go thru everything I have on this baby and DELETE 98% of it?
Please advise to me as best way to go about this???? Also, probably need to change owner???

Thanks, michael

 

[smakme7757]

Only way to be 100% sure that your drive is clean is to format it and erase it with something like DBAN: http://www.dban.org/

Or if you are sure you have deleted all your own personal files you can use http://eraser.heidi.ie/ and do a free space erase which will over write all the free space on the drive.

Personally, if you're concerned about your data, format and nuke with DBAN.

If however you don't care about your data and you just want to give your friend a nice fresh PC, then format and reinstall the OS.

**Don't use DBAN or Eraser on an SSD.

 

[lord_emperor]

If you want your deleted files relatively safe from snooping with un-delete programs I don't think any selective deleting will suffice.

1. DBAN
2. Re-install OS.

 

[beyonddc]

Only way to be 100% sure that your drive is clean is to format it and erase it with something like DBAN: http://www.dban.org/

Or if you are sure you have deleted all your own personal files you can use http://eraser.heidi.ie/ and do a free space erase which will over write all the free space on the drive.

Personally, if you're concerned about your data, format and nuke with DBAN.

If however you don't care about your data and you just want to give your friend a nice fresh PC, then format and reinstall the OS.

**Don't use DBAN or Eraser on an SSD.

Like smakme7757 said, low level formatting and permanent delete on SSD is not really possible. I believe SSD uses a different mechanism to mark a location to be free. Anyway, Mr. Google would tell you all the story about it.

Aside from DBAN, I believe KillDisk would also do the trick for you for low level formatting. http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

 

[ringtail]

in addition to Eraser which smakme7757 mentioned (I haven't used it)

an easy way is to install the free CCleaner.
Click Tools / Drive wiper, and you can set it to overwrite free space (i.e., your deleted files) with 1, or 3, or 7, or 35 passes.

another easy alternative is to install the free Revo Uninstaller.
Click Tools / then in the Optimization window on the left side, scroll down & click Evidence Remover.

Microsoft's way (if you're on a Windows before Win 7, I don't know if it works on W7) is :
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315672

Microsoft's way (if you're on Win XP or higher. So this and the one above both work for XP)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443

Also, the last one above gives a great explanation about this subject.

 

[ringtail]

another thought, to be really really secure for your FUTURE file deletions

install the free TrueCrypt.
Run it and put all the stuff you want to want to delete into the TrueCrypt space, so it becomes encrypted,

and then delete that group of encrypted files.

That's what I get from reading this, and it sounds extremely secure:
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/DataSanitizationTutorial.pdf

 

[Oyeve]

Microwave then a hammer then a shredder.

 

[sm625]

Just keep making copies of your movies/music folder until you run out of HDD space. Then delete the copies.

 

[Merad]

Would it work well enough for this to just go thru everything I have on this baby and DELETE 98% of it?

Deleting files on a HDD does basically nothing. The drive essentially just says "hey this space is available now, if you need to use it". There's no guarantee if/when those actual blocks will be overwritten. There are plenty of tools available that can scan a drive to recover "deleted" files.

To be sure that all files are gone and unrecoverable, you need to write 0's to the entire drive using a tool like DBAN.