Hey. Selling my dads freevents media PC to a mate, but need to wipe it thouroughly as it was a business PC and theres probably some mildly senstive docs that need to be destroyed. Whats the best program to wipe a drive (NOT the recovery partition though!!) THEN... does anyone have any experience with using a recovery CD to get windows back to basic state from a recovery partition or something? Obviously you change the boot order but what can i expect from their onwards? Any advise/insight appreciated
honestly, i would take the hd out and install a new hd, then install windows cleanly, if you have system restore disks that would be the best way to do it.
Problem is as soon as we go down that route you only get about £30 profit. Which doesnt make it worth it. Its an old machiene. Pentium 4 3.06Ghz 1gb DDR 400mhz 160Gb IDE HDD Selling it for £75 so dont really want to start buying new parts for it..
Plug the HDD into another machine, download CCleaner and use the Drive Wipe utility. Tell it to make 3 passes or more.
fair enough, it just depends how sensitive the data is, and wether you trust the person your selling to, not to attempt a data recovery from the drive. you would need to overwrite the whole hd for a secure wipe, at least a couple of times.
Im sure he'll be fine but you've no idea where a HDD might end up so might aswell play it safe. Will probly use the CCleaner tool on 7 passes. Then use the backup CD to reinstall windows. Cheers for help lads.