How-To: Completely Erase Your Hard Drive

By Jason Tomczak
November 5th, 2007

After upgrading to a new computer, you may find yourself feeling magnanimous by donating your old system to a school, church, children's shelter or charity organization. It's a great thing to do and you should be commended for your generosity. The one thing you should not do, however, is donate that computer without completely eliminating all traces of data from the hard drive. Here’s why.

With the tiniest bit of effort, even a pre-teen with little to no computer skill can use simple and free programs to undelete all the files you thought you deleted. That's right. Nearly everything that was ever on your computer - your resume, love letters, tax records, private emails and even the naked pics of you in Brazil - everything has a remnant trace on that hard drive and can be resurrected... with little to no effort. Scary, very scary.

So unless ...

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