How Can I Wipe My Hard Drive?

debitcardmayhem

spud17 wrote: »

There seems to be some confusion in this thread with terminology.
When I see 'wipe a drive', I think dban, so do others.
dban will wipe everything, operating system, restore partition etc, leaving the OP with a bit of a headache, no offence intended, but I'm guessing they would then be struggling to reinstall.
I think that the OP is looking for something to wipe their personal info from the drive.
Use CCleaner, then set it to 'Wipe free space'.

Must be an evening (I don't know what a weekend is spud:p)
Anyway Bluelass all you really need to do is reset the laptop to factory settings, using the Toshiba recovery stuff, then download ccleaner and use it to wipe free space.

bluelass

I have tried the free down load in a link on here but I don't know if it has worked or not.
All it says is downloading in 60 seconds then that's it no other info shows up.
Any advice please.

esuhl

Are you trying to download DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke)?

Are you fully aware that this will delete EVERYTHING on your hard drive, INCLUDING WINDOWS and any recovery partitions? Your PC will not be usable until you install an operating system.

bsod

4 month old query with no clear consistent explanation of what is required, and why = a dead end.

dban is unnecessary.

cookies can be deleted or blocked in the browser, instantly, google clearing cookies, cleaning flash cookies, disabling dcom/dom. Saved passwords can be deleted similarly.

ccleaner can clean cookies and password instantly too. overwriting hard disks completely takes a few hours, for it to be effective you need delete the information in the first place.

there are loads of browsers, email and chat clients that all store data differently.

Personal information (including ip addresses, chat logs, emails) passed on to websites is there's as long as they wish to retain it, nothing you do on a pc will change that.

your requirement could probably be met by ccleaner, in combination with a new user profile, or possibly a re-install/upgrade to windows 10, if you choose the latter, you need to get a move on

Strider590

All pointless, your DNS traffic is recorded at your ISP, Google stores a record of all your searches and every site you visit can be recorded at multiple points. All this is done outside your home address.......

And if anyone wants to argue the DNS point with some wise remark about changing DNS servers, this doesn't work on any connection that uses a BT line, as DNS traffic is hijacked in such a way as it's almost impossible to identify.