I'm giving my 4 year old IBM P4 XP Home machine to a friend, and want to make sure the hard drive is clean. I did a reinstall of the operating system from the partition that IBM places on the disk for recovery, and although is says it is removing all files, my understanding is that they are still there, they are just O.K.'d to be overwritten. Is there an easy way to truly clean this disk without doing another reinstall? Thanks. Alan
To clean up specific files (none holding state secrets) and the drive's free space, rely on Summit Computer's free Hard Disk Scrubber 2. To be extra cautious, check Heavy Scrub to write over the disk three times (see attached). Visit Summit to download your copy. - Spydertrader <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1027154>
I use dban nuke disk (free). PNRG - 12 passes = 8 hours. Then you'll have to repartition and install new os. Thats a good wipe.
You can also use Evidence Eliminator, they offer a 30 free trial somewhere on the net, search google.
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ You can choose to leave your files intact and erase everything else... it will overwrite your tips and sectors not occupied by files in your MFT.
It's been a while but I don't think I'd do the magnet routine unless you wanted to render the hard drive useless. If I remember correctly today's hard drives are "low level" formatted by the manufacturer and we users do the "high level" formatting adding the FAT, NTFS, whatever variant Linux is doing etc.. The magnet approach, if it would work using the type we normally have around the house, would wipe out the low level format the disk controller looks for. But, as I said, it's been a while. Jack