Need to erase a hard drive?
Did you just get a new computer or hard drive? When you're getting rid of an old hard drive, whether you are trashing it or selling it on ebay, it's always a good idea to fully erase all the information off your hard drive so that other people cannot access your personal information.
Simply formatting or erasing your hard drive is not enough to protect your private information!
Please be sure to follow our guides, which will help Windows, Mac, and Linux users that want to securely and safely erase their hard drives.
When is securely erasing private data from your hard disk a concern?
- When you want to sell your computer on sites like eBay or Craigslist.
- When you want to discard your computer or your hard disk drive (maybe you just got a shiny new computer?)
- When you want to return a computer to your employer
Why is Secure Erasing a hard drive important?
When you simple hit the 'delete' key on your computer to delete one or more files, you're not actually erasing those files. Even formatting your hard drive doesn't actually erase your private data. It's like if you had a trash can by your desk, you can drop as many papers into the trash, but it's still sitting there, by your desk, and anybody could rummage through it and look at your paperwork. In the real world, some people use 'Shredders' to completely erase paperwork. In the digital world, the equivalent of a paper shredder is a Secure Disk Erase program that will 'overwrite' your trash with random 1's and 0's basically making it unreadable by any snoopy detective.
How do I Secure Erase a Hard Disk Drive?
There are many programs out there to help you safely erase all your private and personal data from your hard drive. This How-To will explain different programs you can use for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7), Macintosh OSX, and various distributions of Linux.
WipeDrive 5 (50% off)
DiskDeleter Pro (45% off)
