Erase hard drive data permanently

Erase hard drive data permanently

I want to sell my old computer.How do I erase my hard drive data permanently?

It is very important to delete everything on the hard drive of your PC, before you plan to sell it, or dispose it.This precaution is essential, since yourprivate and confidential data is at high risk of being misused.

Just deleting the files, will not completely erase the data present in the files. Deletion, just marks a file as deleted,while the contents of the file still exist on the hard drive. It is therefore, a general standard to erase and rewrite over a drive at least three times, to ensure complete erasure of data.

Remo Drive Wipe lets you completely erase a particular drive and makes sure that data recovery is impossible. The sanitizing profiles feature, rewrite standards, prescribed by various government agencies like the U.S. Police department, U.S. Department of Defense, and, standards approved by many other government agencies around the globe.

Follow the steps given below to use Remo Drive Wipe and to erase hard drive data permanently.

Step 1: Launch the hard drive eraser application, either by double clicking the desktop icon, or by selecting the icon, from the Programs list in the Start menu. The Main window pops up, as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Main window

Step 2: The logical and the physical drives are listed, as shown in Figure a. Select the logical drive whose data is to be erased, or select the physical disk on which, complete hard drive erasure has to be performed, and click the Next button. As you click the Next button, a window to select the sanitizing method is displayed, as shown in figure b.

Figure b: Select sanitizing method

The software provides nine different sanitizing methods, and they are classified into different levels,  based on different security standards.

Select the appropriate method and click on the Next button to erase the selected hard drive. As you click the Next button, a window, asking for confirmation, before start of the erasing process is displayed.

Click on the OK button, to continue with the process of erasing the selected drive. After the erasing process is complete, a message pops up, intimating the same.After the sanitizing process is complete, the whole disk or drive is as fresh as new.