PCA Forums

I've got an older PC that I'm going to give to my son as his is even older/slower and I don't need it. I'm also getting a newer, faster laptop so I won't need my older laptop and might sell it on Ebay (or whatever?).

I'll re-do the OSs on both with Win XP but I'm fairly certain that old files can still be recovered by one who knows how. If so, is there a way to be certain that they're not recoverable on a machine that I'd sell to someone else?

I think this would work

Fill the drive with just junk files, so that every file is writen over

Then format it

Then install the OS

There is some freeware program , but I can't remember the name , that writes over your hard drive randomly several times . I'll try to come up with it . Swipe it , or wipe it , or something .

just look for "thu ultimate boot cd" it has some things on it to do the good formatting.

""the ultimate boot cd"


The Flying Penguin posted that a few days ago. That'll do it heh?

Do a Google search for a program called "Eraser" it is free ware and from what I can tell works pretty good. It will delete a specific file or over write all free space on a given drive with 0's or 1's

Autoclave HDD Sanitizer. Do a google search.

Hmmm, several more programs.

Here's the Autoclave HDD Sanitizer:
http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/

Here's Eraser:
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php

and the one linked above by wvjohn is presently offline.

So the plot's thickening
By chance, has anyone tryed more than one and think one's better than another OR are they all going to be good enough, like .....take my pick?

Check out Dban. Simple and works pretty well. - http://dban.sourceforge.net/