How do I wipe my hard drive so I can sell or dispose of my computer
without giving away my files? I have numerous old computers some of
which have medical/private information. One is even Unix based.

Hello shaner1,

Thanks for letting me answer your question. Your best option for
wiping the harddrive would be to use a utility that I have used before
and have friends who have used it on hard drives for the NHS in the
UK.

The utility is called BCWipe, available here:

http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe.htm

here is some basic information about it

"Main features of the BCWipePD utility

# The utility is able to destroy contents of whole hard drives,
including partition tables, boot records, filesystem structures,
operating system files and user files.

# Wiping procedure can be run on any hardware platform with x386 and
64-bit AMD/Intel architecture, regardless of operating system
installed on the computer.

# BCWipePD can wipe all hard drives on the computer including the one
where operating system is installed.

# Contents of hard drives are wiped regardless of filesystem used to
format the drives (FAT, NTFS, HPFS or other)."

I hope this answers your question, and if you need any more
clarification let me know.

--keystroke-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by keystroke-ga on 15 Sep 2006 11:31 PDT

Just as a quick follow up, I would advise you to move the hard drive
out of the machine you want to format and place the drive into a
computer you are keeping (you can place the Unix drive in a Windows
machine as well). Set the passes to 15 (or Department of Defense
standard) and leave your machine alone for a few hours.

You will then have a totally secure drive.


http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe.htm

This is the Unix deleter for when you want to keep the drive
unformatted but want to delete certain files.

http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe3.htm

That is the same but for Windows.

Search terms:
bcwipe

--keystroke-ga

Had this situation before.
1) Remove hard drive
2} Get a sledge driver
3) you know the rest....

You may also do what is called a full system format and restore which
basically erases your entire hard drive and restores the compter back
to the original state when you first purchased the computer. Would you
like the instructions for this? If so, I would need the brand, model
number, and operating system of your computer so that I can give you
the correct instrutions. E-mail me at Tao5932@aol.com with the info
and I will post the instructions here on Google Answers.

Tao,

I am very sure you mean well but what you are suggesting DOES NOT
fulfil the requirements of the person asking the question.

A full format does not erase all the data on the drive, the only way
to successfully do this is to perform the steps that keystroke had
mentioned in the answer.

Frodo has a good idea, but his steps need to be implemented after the
hard drive wipe.

usrhlp

Diskzapper - Wipe all hard drives to binary zero.

DiskZapper is a Linux-based bootable (floppy or CD-ROM) tool intended
to wipe all hard drives on the machine it runs on to binary zero. This
is intended for uses such as making sure old computers or hard drives
being sold or trashed are clear of any confidential data. It comes in
the form of a floppy image (ready to dd or rawrite) or a CD ISO image
(ready to burn to CDR). No other software or OS required.
Licence : Freeware

This is the best and fastest way to clean computers! BCWipe is nice
but you have to slave the drive. With DiskZapper you just use it on a
floopy or CD and get the job done without having to open the CPU!

Version : 1.0 Stable [Stable]

IF you are using SEAGATE Hard Disk use Seagate Disk wizard and
Zerofill the Hard Drive. No data will remain. Makes it like a new Hard
disk. All other Softwares are not effective while Recover Myfiles Like
Software Recovers Files From HDD's that are Formatted Many Times and
Installed many Times