Why would anyone want to completely wipe their hard drive, you ask? Well, for one, if you ever throw your old PC out (or donate it), it's a good idea to make sure that it's completely clean to protect yourself against identity theft, amongst other things.

Yes, you could format your hard drive, but that will only take care of the file table, but not the files themselves. Think of it this way: the list that tells your computer where each file is gets deleted, but the files themselves are still there.

Someone with the right equipment and knowhow will therefore still be able to access your files. To avoid that, you need something that will replace your data with other, nonsensical data such as zeros. Even then your information can still be gleaned by very experienced people, so the best way would be to have your data wiped more than once.

One powerful way in which to do this is with Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN). On the downloads page you can get different versions, which will allow you to run the program from a CD/DVD or a floppy disk/bootable flash drive.

DBAN gives you different options of wiping when you run it, from passing across the hard drive once and filling it with zeros, right up to passing 35 times across the hard drive, or passing eight times and filling it with data from a random number generator.

When it's finished, your hard drive should be completely clean. Of course, the only real way of making sure that no-one can use your hard drive is by running a truck over it...

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