Erasing a Hard Drive

TIP OF THE DAY

Erasing a Hard Drive

Question
"I plan on donating my computer to a charitable cause but for security reasons I wish to delete my hard drive using 1's and 0's. The charity will install there own OS. Any suggestions?"

Answer
"Just about any freeware site will offer programs that are designed to do a multiple overwrite of your drive. Once a drive is erased and overwritten a half a dozen times it is beyond reality to worry about anyone bothering to try to recover the data. It would cost so much money to attempt to recover the data that even if some genius could pull it off the cost would be greater than any hoped for benefit."

Sites to try:

1. www.active-eraser.com
2. www.cypherix.com: Secure IT
3. www.diskwiper.com
4. www.blancco.com
5. www.erasedisk.com
6. www.harddrivewipe.com
7. www.micro2000.com/eraserdisk/
8. www.whitecanyon.com: WipeDrive & SecureClean - Try here first.
From Extreme Tech: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1421846,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532