[Hardware] best way to format a Harddrive ?

[shedidwhat]

selling my system to a friend as im building a new one

and I dont want him to be able to recover anything.

what programs would you recommend for erasing harddrives ?

[Ark of Truth]

They are several things you can do, but if he is replacing his with yours, just take out your HDD and places his in and keep your for more storage space in your system

But if you don't want to do that you need to do a low level format.

[shedidwhat]

what are some good tools for doing a low level format ?

Im sure there are good ones and BS ones

anyone use some before?

[Ark of Truth]

Is it a HDD or a SSD?

Some people call SSD HDD by mistake. It makes a bloody big difference too!

You see the thing is with low leveling formatting there is a 10-20£ chance that a HDD can became "bricked" meaning that is now totally useless and will no longer allow a format.

You can also get hybrids now which are tricky to format.

[Symon]

If you are worried, locate a free 'data shredder' utility (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Shredder). Use that to clear off everything personal and then do a normal format.

That'd be enough for me.

[Slammer64]

Boot with a Linux install disc and break the partitions and then re-partition and format.

[nanogenesis]

I don't know if it'll do the trick but,

take a windows xp installation cd, run it with your HDD attached, when the format window shows up, simply delete all the partions

And if you're really worried about him using recovery programs to recover data, then first, do a "Wipe Free Space" using CCCleaner, then delete partions.

If you emptied your hard drive leaving only essential windows elements then no recovery program should be able to kick in and restore data.

[shedidwhat]

thanks nano, thats the info I was looking for.

yea he's the type that would use a recovery program

just to see what he could find

[Mashi]

http://www.dban.org/

Never need anything else.

[gregathit]

Just format as per the above tips and leave some goatse pics on there to teach him some manners!

LOL!!!

[Slammer64]

That's so cruel gregathit, must be why I like the idea. LOL