How do you clean your information off of a computer?

I am selling my laptop and I need to take off all my information, mainly pictures and the websites that automatically log me in when I go to them. How do you do that?How do you clean your information off of a computer?No, thats NOT good enough...



1. You have to reformat it. Meaning : completely wipe out the entire hard drive. All you need is a Windows CD and a bit tweaking of BIOS to make Windows start from CD and not from the hard drive next time... Restart and you are ready to follow the simple options from the CD, in an hour you should have it formatted.



2. When its done, download this program : http://download.cnet.com/Eraser/3000-209鈥?/a>

Its called Eraser. It will overwrite your hard drive several times with carefully selected patterns, making data almost impossible to retrieve by non professionals. Only that way, you are SAFE %26amp; ready to sell the laptop. Otherwise people can simply use a data retrieving programs and they can find information about you even forgot you had. Such as where you live, your naked pictures, your work...



Edit : what diana is suggesting is also very good alternative, but it runs from DOS and some people are very uncomfortable with DOS... But yes, Darik`s program is one of the best data erasers there is.



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If you decline to do as i am suggesting... Open your browser. Click on Tools 鈫?Clear Private Data / select all / click Clear Private Data Now ( thats for Firefox ).



Hope it helped.



RegardsHow do you clean your information off of a computer?Try DBAN. It's free and open source.



From the site:

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.How do you clean your information off of a computer?It's almost impossible to completely erase information from a computer hard disk so that it can't be recovered. What I usually do is buy a new hard disk, fit it in the computer, reinstall Windows and other programs and keep all my old hard disks.