Is there a way to wipe out your entire hard drive?

Question

i saved everything i wanted to a flash drive and now i want to wipe out my computer is there a way to do that best answere to the opne that works

Answer 1

HDD Wipe

secure and unrecoverable

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2...

Answer 2

I hightec computer virus

Answer 3

are you doing this cause you want to sell your hard drive or cause you want to reinstall. if its the latter then when you reinstall the OS it usually erase everything on the hard drive before installing if you is selling the hard drive then try

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2...

EDIT: just saw Shawn B suggest the same thing so it must be reliable

Answer 4

Unless you have your Operating System Disk and all the software that came on your computer, your best option would be to run the system recovery. (you will either have disks, were told to make some when you first got it or will need to find out from the laptop manufacturer's website how to access the recovery partition).

Running the recovery will format the hard drive and set it back to how it was when you first got it.  Understand you will have to download and install all the updates for your Operating System.

--If you are planning on selling it, you may want to look at other options.

Answer 5

Well the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a copy of the operating system you wish to reinstall on the hard drive.  Create a startup disk before you wipe it.

Windows XP should allow you to boot from disk before windows loads and you can skip that first step.

Just go into your bios setup when your computer loads up (hit DEL repeatedly) and set your primary boot drive to your CD ROM

You will get a message that says "to boot from disk hit any key" so hit any key you want to.

That should bring up the windows installation guide, from there you can completely delete partitions, and format the drive.  Do not do a quick format.  If you do a quick format, it is still possible for someone to recover all of your old information.

Answer 6

I use Killdisk (search for Killdisk) - It overwrites the hard drive to all zeros, and is the system the DOD uses. Use the free version and it works well.

Answer 7

Go to the HDD manufacturer's website and download their utility to format the harddrive.  Each one is different.  For example Seagate has seatools