Cleaning hard drive

Keanosafc

I'm selling a pc but want to format the harddrive before I let it go as I have bank info etc on it.

I'm aware that I can reinstall windows, but I'd prefer to use a programme that does a more secure format, I know that all types of formatting can be recovered but I want to make it as difficult as possible for peace of mind.

Any ideas?

bat999

This question's been asked before.
Have a look at this thread:-http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=505633

Keanosafc

Thanks I had done a search but mustn't have put in the right info.

superscaper

Keanosafc wrote: »

I know that all types of formatting can be recovered but I want to make it as difficult as possible for peace of mind.

Data can be recovered when only formatting a drive, but using something like DBAN in the link bat999 gave makes the data completely unrecoverable. Not just difficult to recover but practically impossible (at the current time anyway). This isn't formatting in the usual sense, it's flipping all the bits of the entire drive multiple times.