Format Hard Drive

[tamborine]

Need to format hard drive on laptop before passing it on. I can reload WXP for further use but want to recycle rather than hammer the machine.

Whats the best way please ?

[VHG]

Do you mean "format it" or "wipe it".

A simple format will NOT delete all the files off the disk (though it may hide them) and some may still be able to recovered with recovery software.

If all you want to do is a format then you can do that during an install of Windows.

However if you want to securely wipe it to make sure ALL the data is off the disk then use something like DBAN

http://www.dban.org/

[tamborine]

Wouldnt download VHG