Hi: What is the best way - other than physical destruction - to sanitize a computer's hard drive before it is sold or given away? Complete removal of all data; credit card and bank account no.s etc etc. I have read about software that does this and that just formatting will not do the job. TIA, Jim

(a) Utilities such as Wipeinfo from Norton Disk Doctor can overwrite files, directories, and drives, however they do not like using FAT32. (b) Download a Linux boot disk, like tomsrtbt (www.toms.net/rb/) or Hal91 (www.itm.tu-clausthal.de/~perle/hal91/). Write that to a floppy and so on . . . If you want something more creative, put a spare hard drive (>100 MB) in the computer, note which controller it's on, and download ZipSlack (www.slackware.org/zipslack) and put it on that. Or use a Linux boot CD (steal one, download an ISO online, or get one from a Linux for Dummies book). Whatever. A boot disk should work fine. Log in as root (if you just get a prompt, you probably are logged in as root) and run this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX Replace hdX with: hda if the drive is primary master hdb if the drive is primary slave hdc if the drive is secondary master hdd if the drive is secondary slave If you accidentally use the wrong drive, you will either wreck whatever other drive you referred to, or just do nothing at all. So please be careful and LOOK BEFORE YOU NUKE. Verify stuff in the BIOS beforehand. Remove other drives if you're REALLY paranoid. This will replace the entire drive with 0s. This will keep most normal people from getting at the data. However, one with the appropriate knowledge, tools, and/or money can still recover the data. I have a solution for that as well: dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hdX Once again, replace hdX with the correct drive. This will overwrite the drive with random garbage. Do it as many times as you wish. Run the first command a few times as well. Then overwrite with more random garbage. Rinse and repeat as many times as you need. Be careful you don't melt or overheat the drive by working it too hard. Don't forget (oh yeah, this is the wrong time to realize that you forgot to save something on the drive), at the end, after you've cleansed the drive as much as you ever could want to, run the first command one last time to zero the entire drive so it's not filled with garbage, and if you want to be nice use Fdisk to make a partition for the receiver of the drive.

CLEANDISK v6.2 (v6.0 was a major upgrade) (Only 0.6 Mb) http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/clndisk.html - Comprehensive disk cleaning for the very tightest security (for Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP) - What is Clean Disk Security? - This program gives you secure file deletion, making sure that deleted files cannot be undeleted again. Deleting a file normally just removes the file's directory entry, but the data itself remains on the disk. This program completely eliminates the contents of deleted files. The highly acclaimed Gutmann disk cleaning method is now available as an option. This program can also clean the Window's swap file, and can optionally clean unneeded temporary files from your hard disk, such as your Internet browser cache, files in your system's Recycle Bin, and can clear the "recent files" list. Comes with a direct disk viewer for discovering exactly what is on your hard disk. - Don't sell your hard drive before cleaning it with Clean Disk Security ™! - http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000VCO,.html http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000VCO,.html Clean Disk Security was awarded the highly coveted 5 stars at ZD NET

Thank you Chris and Michael for those very detailed and informative responses. I have printed for reference. Thanks again. I always get good stuff from this forum. Jim