How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?

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Maybe this would work:

http://eraseyourharddrive.com

Yes, there are various utilities out there that will do varying degrees of data "wiping" to help decrease the chances that the data can be recovered. And if an unconditional Format isn't enough for you, then they might be worth checking out. But remember that there are few guarantees ... they only decrease the probability of recovery, not neccessarily eliminate it. Format takes care of the 99% case ... the rest of you need to decide how much trouble you want to take.

Darik's Boot and Nuke is a free tool for doing just this.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

If you want to erase your hard disk, simply throw it into an incinerator. That way, theres no freakin way thanyone will ever get to your stuff.

oh yeah!!

My sister inlaw gave me her comp. but it has a virus on it that i cant get rid of. I was wondering if i could erase or reformat my hardrive to reinstall WindowsXP without the hard drive still having the virus on it. Im not to sure what kind of virus it is, but im pretty sure its some kind of spyware or adware.Your comments would greatly be appreciated

I think reformatting and reinstalling is a great way to start clean. Make sure to install anti-virus and anti-spyware software right away. A couple of articles that may help:
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_keep_my_computer_safe_on_the_internet.html
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_set_up_my_computer_simply.html

I've used the Web-deployable EraseYourHardDrive.com and found it to be an efficient and effective method of conducting a three-time disk overwrite and verification pass. The software automatically produces a Certificate of Data Erasure - guaranteeing success of hard drive erasure. I tried three off-the-shelf data recovery programs and could find no trace of data. I liked the fact that the software was Web-deployable so that I could erase the drive immediately and did not have to download an .exe file nor did I have to wait for a CD to arrive in the mail. Quick, convenient and obviously effective.

I format hard disk by command (format c:/q/u/s)
after that i loss my data can you suggest me any process for recovery data

That's what formating does ... it erases your disk.

You can try googling for "unformat", and you may find some tools that can help, but I would not be hopefull.

at the risk of looking like i didn't read the above comments (I did)...I gave away the desktop monitor years ago and kept my compaq hard drive out of fear of data security...it was purchased in '99 and has a very old Windows on it...there's no chance of buying or using any of the cleaning software - so are you saying the rumor of strong magnets won't work? I live in an apt, I'mnot about to be drilling into anything...HELP! Anyone know of companies that come take away and clean hard drives???someone once said tat HP had a day when people could drop off old machines but I've never seen it advertized. What can a paranoid do with an old drive lying around the apt that htey are dying to ditch???

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