Posted by Jim on September 27, 19101 at 01:13:48:
In Reply to: completely cleaning off a hard drive posted by Pete on September 18, 19101 at 08:16:02:
: I want to get rid of a computer, but want to be sure none of the data is retrivable
: How do I completely wipe out whats on the drive now?
Reformatting does not remove all bits of data, and you are correct that it could still be retrieved. Norton Utilities includes a utility called "Wipeinfo" that writes Xs and Os or numbers on every sector of the drive, and can be set to make multiple passes so that your old data is written over several times. This is a convenient method of obliterating old data, although there probably are others.