Windows Ghosting...

[JLS]

Does anyone have any software recommendations for totally wiping a hard drive.. not just formatting it. I want to make sure the person im selling it too can't recover any of my data, so I want it totally clean.

Ive got a buyer for my laptop (a windows xp machine) which im selling (so I can buy a powerbook instead).

I know this is a mac forum, but lots of you use both.

Thanks for any help

[stoid]

Run Disc Utility from an OS disc, and there is an option to zero the HD, and another to do an 8x random write.

[monkeydo_jb]

The best way to do a low level format (zero the drive) is to find out what brand the drive
is and get a utility from the manufacturer's website.

[monkeydo_jb]

Just found this (http://www.r-wipe.com/) utility.

It has a free, fully functional 15 day trial.

[jeremy.king]

Found this too

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

[EminenceGrise]

You could always download a small floppy disribution of Linux or BSD and use dd, e.g. "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda", as root a couple of times. That should do the trick. Might just be easier to download one of the other utilities mentioned though.

[JLS]

Thanks guys. Those apps seemed to run within windows (meaning they wont delete the 'secret' files windows denys access too) so it has to be done in dos. Great huh.

I had a look into linux formatting tools and found this:

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Thanks very much eveyone :)