How To: Securely Erase a Hard Drive
February 28th, 2007 by SysAdmin
There maybe a time when you need to replace, sell, give away your computer or laptop. You certainly don’t want the next person who receives the computer looking at your personal word documents or emails. They could possibly use the information to endanger you or a member of your family.
Even though you may think you’ve deleted the files there are still ways to recover them. The only sure way to permanently remove your personal information from a computer is to low level format the hard drive.
Low level formatting means that the hard disk will be overwritten many times. Usually with zeros, which makes the possibility of recovering your personal data pretty much impossible.
Disk Cleaning Utilities:
Active Kill Disk (Free)
Window Washer (Shareware) Safely erase unwanted files. Comes with a System Erase Utility, allowing you to create a bootable disk to securely erase a hard disk drive.
Safety First:
If you work in a school or any government organisation where the old computers are given away. I strongly recommend that the hard disk drive is securely erased before doing so.
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