[WOBBLY BOB]

happy Friday.

[Defiant]

Reformat it. That should be good enough for him, unless he is in trouble with the NSA.

[devistate one four]

I heard an IT type mention to do a format on the hard drive.

[cripplecreek]

A new hard drive is pretty cheap. I bought one for under $50 and installed it myself and I have minimal skills.

However a laptop may be a whole other animal.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

[oh8eleven]

Google - reformat the hard drive.

[Neidermeyer]

Plenty of freeware out there ,, This may not be the best but it’s the first I found ... http://filehippo.com/download_eraser/

[struwwelpeter]

Мне тоже приятно когда приходит пятница, но причем здесь креветки? ;-)

I don't know if I'd WANT to have in my possession a computer that once contained SOMETHING that the previous owner was very worried about anyone finding.

[Egon]

If he’s that worried, have him keep the drive and you purchase a new (probably much larger) one for around $60. They’re really not difficult to install.

[Wierzbowski]

Google “DBAN”. Free and easy!

[Greysard]

http://www.dban.org/

[posterchild]

Windows? Mac OS X? Linux?

[Tijeras_Slim]

I have no deniro

Well, there's wiping a hard drive, and there's really wiping a hard drive.

[Lurker]

C:format

[gimme1ibertee]

Happy Friday WB!
I have a tech-related question of my own....I have a Dell Dimension 4550 and the BIOS is A03....I tried to get the BIOS upgrade from Dell but to no avail.Guess my computer’s too outdated (2002)....There is an upgrade file (BIOS A08) on the Dell website but I can’t access it-it will download but when I try to open it,I get a message that says “No files available to download”...guess Dell doesn’t support Windows XP anymore. The Microsoft site was no help at all.I have Windows XP Home Ed.Can I get a bootable disk someplace so I can upgrade my BIOS? I’m not geek-level so I need it to be as simple as possible. Any ideas?

[braf]

If you're concerned that somebody might go to the trouble of trying to recover data after a reformat, there are programs that will "secure erase" (repeatedly overwrite) the drive.

Free Secure (Destructive) File and Disk Deletion Tools

[240B]

The best (only?) way to truly wipe a hard drive so that it would pass an FBI scan, is to replace it with a new one.

So many hidden records on a hard drive, you wouldn’t believe it. BTW, erasing a file does not erase the file. It just erases the index address to it.

Wiping a disk does not wipe a disk. With the right scan, authorities can see what was on the disk before it was wiped depending on the memory retention characteristics on the bit level.

New drive, destroy the old is the only way to be certain.

[bigbob]

Depending on how high his expectations are....

[katana]

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Make sure you can reinstall the operating system after you reformat it. You might need to create recovery CDROM before you start. (Some OEMs used to leave it up to you create the operating system recovery CDs/DVDs.) Hopefully he’ll have the recovery DVD, but read the owners manual, just in case.

If you format the HD and don’t have recovery DVDs you’ll have to buy Windows SW new. It might be cheaper just to take it to Best Buy and have the Geek Squad erase it for you. Alternatively, the OEM may sell the replacement recovery DVDs.

[floozy22]

Some of these are free utilities, though #10 has the best idea. If you can swing a new hard drive it's worth it.

http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/#dataremoval

http://www.diskwipe.org/

http://www.active-disk-wiper.com/downloadfree.htm