preparing hard drive for new owner

ThriceNightly · 18 Jan 2007 at 21:55

i have sold a 250gb hard drive.it has an operating system, and a few basic programs on it but no personal information of any concern on it.

is it ok to send the drive out to the new owner like this or should i format it?

if i need to format it what is the easiest and quickest way of doing this.

thanks

rpstewart · 18 Jan 2007 at 23:50

I'd wipe the drive before I sold it without question. There are some suggestions on software tools in this thread

A piece of advice though, if you do wipe it with Dban or the like, unplug all your other disks from the machine first, you don't want to go wiping the wrong drive.

TC1 · 19 Jan 2007 at 08:26

I just do a full format.

meansizzler · 19 Jan 2007 at 11:35

USing Windows Dsk Management do a full format...

div0 · 19 Jan 2007 at 11:46

Yeah no need to go overboard IMO. If there is no personal information on the disk, just use Disk Management in XP and format the drive from there.

ThriceNightly · 19 Jan 2007 at 17:00

div0 said:
Yeah no need to go overboard IMO. If there is no personal information on the disk, just use Disk Management in XP and format the drive from there.

thanks, how long would it take for a 250gb ide?

Massive Attack · 19 Jan 2007 at 18:06

use Western digital diagnostics and write zeros to the drive, data is unrecoverable and is safest way