How can you COMPLETELY remove all information from your computer I'm donating my old desktop...? ?

Question

How can you COMPLETELY remove all information from your computer I'm donating my old desktop...? ?

Answer 1

You can format the drive but there are still ways of getting the data off of it. About the only thing you can do other than smashin....lol.

Answer 2

You really can't

You can make that info difficult to access, but you cannot make it be not there anymore unless you remove the hard drive and destroy it

Answer 3

Sure formatting and Windows washer works, but is that really as fun as smashing it was a hammer? No it isn't. In all seriousness, it may be cheaper and easier to just get a cheap new hard drive for it. Then you smash your old one.

Answer 4

You could format the computer with specialized applications that remove all traces of the data. Windows Washer is an example of one that will clean up your free space, but it needs to be run within windows. If you deleted all of your data and then used windows washer to clean the space and then formatted windows off of the drive, then your data would not be recoverable.  

Answer 5

Remove the Hard drive and smash it with a hammer a few times.  

No, seriously.  

Hard Drives have the shortest life span of all the components, and should be replaced first and foremost when transferring ownership of a computer.  The last thing someone wants when they get their new computer, is for the Hard drive to fail. This way, when they get their "new" computer, they will have a brand new hard drive as well.

Answer 6

You need to run a program like deriks boot and nuke, or any drive wiping shareware.  search for deriks it is free.  make sure you select at least three passes in the software.

If you only reformat your drive an experienced person can still get data off of your hard drive.

Answer 7

There are several ways to erase, wipe out, format etc. a hard drive if you are wanting to use or re-use it again. You can format during the OS installation (highly recommended). Since you are wanting to wipe out your drive and "start over" make sure all of your data is backed up. Wiping out or formatting your drive will destroy all data on the hard drive.

If the hard drive is just another separate hard drive that you are storing data on (let's say shows up as E: in My Computer) then you can format it within Windows itself by right clicking on it and selecting format.

If you are wanting to format a drive that isn't going to be used again, but want to make sure the data is completely gone, then you can use a utility like KillDisk.

Active@ KillDisk - Hard Drive Eraser is powerful and compact software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.

If you use FDISK, FORMAT utilities, or DELETE standard operating system command for data removal, there is always a chance to recover deleted files (using undelete file or some data recovery software) and use against the owner's will. 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.

Answer 8

reformat it ,  put in your windows disk and when your computer is loading up make sure it boots onto the disk and then click reformat and carry on

Answer 9

Well a lot of ppl are saying that you can't get all your info off without destroying it.  If you have a really powereful magnet, you can wipe it clean.  Everything is completely unrecoverable after that.  :P  But really your options are to either remove the drive and replace it with another or just reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system.