How to Wipe Harddrive

[clintster442]

I want to totally wipe my harddrive completeley and erase everything to basically make it like when I got it new. I'm not getting rid of the harddrive, I just screwed some stuff up installing the components of my new hard drive and want to start over.

The goal is to press the power button and have the PC boot up like the first time ever (which was 4 days ago) and have absolutey nothing on it except the clean factory default BIOS on the mobo.

Already backed up all my data, what's the best way to go about doing this?

 

[COLGeek]

For your purposes, just reformat it when you do the new install and you'll be fine.

 

[WyomingKnott]

COLGeeK is right. You don't need to completely wipe it. That's needed if you are going to, say, give a PC that used to have sensitive data on it to someone else, to make sure that the data can't be recovered. A simple deletion of partitions is enough to let you install as if it were never there.

I wipe my hard drives with a lint-free cloth sprayed with a 5% solution of white vinegar. Either that or use the Secure Erase command via Parted Magic.

 

[clintster442]

Best answer selected by clintster442.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey