Earasing personal info

[Disillusion]

If possible, get a hold of the OS installer disc. Then, use one of those programs that writes zeros to the HDD a certain amount of times and reinstall the OS.

That should overwrite any data enough that the average user can't retrieve back.

 

[MrCoffee]

working on the assumption that an OS disk is out of the question then you need to do two things:

1) Delete as much of your stuff as possible - CCleaner (awsome program)

2) Wipe your free space (just because you delete something doesn't mean its gone ) - any program that will write several passes of random bits to your unused space.

Fail to do either of these an your security could be compromised.

 

[EricB]

working on the assumption that an OS disk is out of the question then you need to do two things:

1) Delete as much of your stuff as possible - CCleaner (awsome program)

2) Wipe your free space (just because you delete something doesn't mean its gone ) - any program that will write several passes of random bits to your unused space.

Fail to do either of these an your security could be compromised.

evidence eliminator will do just that

 

[denysy1]

The thing is I have a Windows XP SP2 disk, but its not the one that was used to install Windows on my laptop. Will that work?

And also, will I have to reinstall all the drivers? And most important, will I have to install the hd driver manually (because I have SATA)?

 

[jcortes]

yes the cd will work fine so long as its the same version you have right now (home, mce, pro) and installing the drivers wont be that hard but you will have to do it. also i don't see why having a sata drive would effect you being able to format. i have sata in my desktop and I format all the time may be different in laptops but i cant imagine why.