How To Wipe A Computer Hard Drive - Blog Pinker - World News Blog Website and Articles

How To Wipe A Computer Hard Drive

Sunday, 03 June 2007

There are times when you accumulate too much junk on our computer hard drive and want to get rid of what you don’t need. Then again, you may have purchased a new computer and plan on selling, or donating the old computer to charity. When you do this you want to remove everything from your hard drive, and you want to remove it permanently so it is not available to others. On the other hand you may just want to clean up your hard drive and get rid of all of the useless junk.

First of all, to wipe a computer hard drive, you will need to go through all of your files and choose which to keep to CD, or other data storage unit. You will need to be sure all important files have been backed up. This means you have made an extra, external copy, in the event of the corruption of your computer hard drive. You may choose to use a program to help you with the process.

Once you have removed the files you want to keep, you will need to put in your Windows CD and reboot the computer. Make sure you type in ‘New install, please wipe out and erase my hard drive’. This installation will take quite some time so make sure you do not need to do any work on the computer for a good while.

Once you are confident you have wiped your computer hard drive, you will want to enter partitions after you have downloaded the programs. A partition allows you to divide the space on your hard drive into sections. You can partition the hard drive into as many sections as you want. You will want to divide the hard drive in half, at least. The first half would be for all programs, including Windows. The other half would hold the data you saved earlier.

Remember, non system partitions that are not formatted, are not usable. To format your hard drive, simply right click on the partition in ‘My Computer’, and choose format. You can name the partition anything you like, as long as you know what’s in it, nobody else needs to.

Once you have accomplished this, you can personalize your programs. For instance you can move your documents. Your partition might look something like this, D:\Documents. Nearly all of your documents will be sent here to save to files. You will know exactly where your documents are going when you add this partition.

The next step is to install any external software drivers, such as printers and graphic cards. Next, you will be able to download any of the information that you saved on CD or other devices. You will not need to download all of it, just the most used programs and documents. The rest will be there when, and if, you need them.

You will absolutely want your antivirus installed right away. If you do not have a good antivirus, AVG Antivirus-Free, is what I use on my computer, it is a very diligent and complete Antivirus and it can be downloaded free.

You will also want your favorite programs available at a click of the mouse. You can place the shortcuts on your desktop, or in the quick launch bar. This is the best way I have found to wipe a computer hard drive.

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