Erasing Data from Hard Drive

[Snubber]

I am about to sell my old laptop and want to be sure that all my personal data is deleted. I know that simply formatting the drive will not erase the data.

Are there any free apps that can completely erase the data?

Cheers, Snubbs

 

[5er driver]

CCleaner is free and has 4 options for secure deletion:

Simple Overwrite (1 Pass)
DOD 5220.22-M (3 Passes)
NSA (7 Passes)
Gutmann (35 Passes)

 

[[Olly]]

+1 for CCleaner.

A 3 pass wipe will erase your data in such a way that it will be well nigh impossible to recover it.

 

[[Olly]]

Or if you want to wipe the drive while it's still in the laptop you could use a bootable program like Dariks Boot and Nuke.

 

[Philtor]

I would use DBAN for this.

 

[Snubber]

Thanks guys...