Giving away my computer and I want it porn free...some help please.

[TropixxxStudios]

I am a long time Mac person who made the mistake of trying PC this year.

I want to donate my PC to a friend, but I want to make sure any and all business related items are off of it...and I mean really off....not just in the trash can and recycled.

Can anyone suggest a product or tell me the correct way to delete something off a PC so that it is really gone?

[Bec]

Absolute best way is to reformat the drive and reinstall the drivers and OS.

[Chilihost]

if you have a recovery disk, use it. It will restore the system to the same state that you bought it - with all proper drivers in place.

cheers,
Luke

[gaybucks_chip]

Even formatting a drive will not necessarily prevent data from being restored; GetDataBack software can restore files after a drive has been formatted.

If you're concerned that someone might go digging around and intentionally trying to restore files you've deleted, you want to use a secure erase tool. These delete the files, delete the FAT, and write random data patterns multiple times over the sectors where the files were stored.

"Eraser" (the 2nd one) can either wipe the entire drive or selectively wipe files without destroying the OS files, so if you don't want to mess with reloading and know for sure where all your files are, that might be a quicker solution.

Here are two that are either free or very inexpensive ($20)

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

[phil64]

I've tried "http://dban.sourceforge.net/" before when I sold my PC, it took awhile to do its thing but I believe it worked great.

[gaybucks_chip]

yah, that's the downside... any of these programs that "scrub" data from the drive tend to take forever, particularly with a big drive, because they are rewriting every sector on the drive multiple times, then rereading to ensure there's nothing left. It's one of those things you set up and come back a day or so later...