what is the best way to completely format my active hard drive

[Griffsbrown]

so im giving a hard drive to a friend and i want completely erase everything on it. i mean more then just the actual data, im talking everything. i dont want an oem partition or anything. here is the problem. its on a laptop and its the only active hard drive. is there a way to use a program like Active@ Kill Disk from the bios or something. thanks in advance.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Make a Linux or GParted bootable USB drive, then erase it from that.

 

[das_stig]

Hirens BootCD and use Kill Disk or one of the other disk wiping tools.

 

[manofchalk]

1. Use some kind of Linux Live CD or USB drive and reformat it from there, maybe run a secure erase program to make sure any data on it isn't recoverable.
2. Pull the drive out, stick it in a conventional Windows desktop and then reformat and secure erase.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Use a command line tool (or a GUI for one) to tell the drive to secure erase itself, rather than just write zeros everywhere. Fixes the unused/reserve space issue, and the drive won't do anything until it's done, even if you turn it off.