best way to delete all hard drive files please

[DOBEYPETE]

I have an old computer that my grandchildren,s school can make use of. What is the best way to remove all personal files / unwanted soft ware from the hard drive, running WIN 98 SE.

ALL HELP APPRECIATED

[vehelpfulguy]

Manual deletion of files is not enough. Even when a file is deleted from Windows it is still on the hard disk, months or years later.

It has been shown that people who buy second hand computers can often obtain passwords, bank details and other information.

The best thing to do is run a utility that overwrites the hard disk a number of times with random numbers or zeroes.

They will often be DOS utilities but note EVERYTHING on the disk is deleted, EVEN WINDOWS.

If you do not do this then do NOT give the PC away but remove the hard disk and destoy it with a hammer.

I have never used such a program, but some are listed here

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

http://www.killdisk.com/products.htm

http://www.disksh.com/en/ds/faq.html

[vehelpfulguy]

Useful discussion on subject here

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=229075&forumid=1

More here

http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,11037098,00.htm

and here

http://www.iolo.com/ds/story.cfm?story=26

[PeterJS]

Go to the Computer Active site and punch in your request. You will get a lot of info there, but you might try this one first, http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/features/2146582/erase-erased-memory

Hope this helps.

[fo3nix]

as vehelpfulguy suggests, you're best running a good formatter that will securely remove everything, and then re-install windows.

[qapmoc]

Many of the hard drive manufacturers have software which completely reinitialises the drive, they don't say to use it for your purpose just for reformatting but they are really aggressive and overwrite everything. Find out what make the drive is and go to the manufacturers site and look for disk utilities which include low level format or the equivalent.

Before somebody says you can't low level format modern drives, I know - but Maxtor for instance call it that.