What's the best way to clear personal information off a computer before selling it?

Reformating (erasing everything from the disc) is a start. However, data can be recovered from a reformatted system, so I would recommend a utility that performs a secure format, formatting the drive and then overwriting everything with random data. This ensures that it is physically impossible to recover.





Darik's Boot %26amp; Nuke: http://www.dban.org/





Burn it to a CD, boot from the CD, and your hard drive is securely wiped. (google ';Derik's boot and nuke'; for more detailed instructions)What's the best way to clear personal information off a computer before selling it?
Darik to the rescue!





';Darik's Boot and Nuke (';DBAN';) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.';





';DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.';





Just remember, this will totally erase your operating system, and all your data too...everything. Windows will need to be re-installed.





Free at:


http://dban.sourceforge.net/What's the best way to clear personal information off a computer before selling it?
Remove the hard drive. You can never be sure of removing all information off of it.
Re-format the hard drive from scratch, then restore the systems.