[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Remove Sensitive Data Before You Sell an Old PC here

[WINDDRAGON]

just wanted to say I used DBAN on four company computers when we retired them and gave them away. It did a good job and I was able to reinstall the original Windows XP Pro with no problems.

[number6]

Eraser is a convenient tool.
There are several hard drive wipers on the Ultimate Boot CD including Darik's and Active@KillDisk. You might as well get the UBCD iso as long as you're going to burn an iso anyway.
CCleaner can now wipe free space as well.

[Kinman]

For systems that have a recovery partition, instead of wipe the whole drive, I think you can just wipe the OS partition, and then do recovery.
Wipe 35 times is probably a little crazy (left alone time consuming), 7 would make more sense. But for a big drive, like 500, or even 750GB, or 1TB, it will take hours, if not a day, to wipe the whole driver 7 times.
But, well, it is a one time job, so worth the time for security and privacy.

[BobQSr]

"Erase" works fine on individual files.

When the sensitive files are gone, open My Computer (Computer in Vista), right-click your C: drive and select Erase Unused Space.

"Erase Unused Space" crappified my computer. "Restore" seems to have fixed it.

[jlhiatt76]

I have used the Disk Wiper feature in Acronis True Image Home 2009. Works very well. Wiped my external drive after it became infected (due to creating an image of C: which was, unfortunately, infected at the time I made the image). Used Dept. of Defense method.