How to completely erase HD

sentralorigin

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My friend was trying to erase his HD, so he reformatted, ran this program http://dban.sourceforge.net/ and rewrote over it with random 1's and 0's a dozen times. Even then, the FBI forensics found traces of information about his drug heist. I don't want to make the same mistake he did, but I also do NOT want to destroy the HD by drilling holes in it and tossing it into the Atlantic Ocean. I want to keep it, but I'd like it to be the way when I first bought it, with no way to recover any information. I thought my HD was clean if I deleted all partitions, and reformatted the whole thing, but it turns out it's pretty easy to recover information if you don't somehow clean it with no way of recovering. How can I do this?
 
If it's a HDD he had that had info on it but he moved it to like a C drive or the first HDD... Just go to My Computer, then right click on the drive he wants to erase, and click format, it erases everything on the drive.
 
It depends on what drive manufactor the HD u have is, I think that Western Digital had a application that writes the entire drive to 0`s, Id try to use that.
 
Even then, the FBI forensics found traces of information about his drug heist.

I don't want to make the same mistake he did

Wowww, wait one minute, you want to get rid of data that can relate to a drug heist? Sack me helping you!
 
plmatt91, thanks for trying to help, but just telling windows to format the drive doesn't do much, it just says that everything is deleted when in reality it's all still there but now ready to be recorded over when something new takes it's place. If you read the first post he kinda explained it already. sentralorigin it is very hard to completely erase information, my advice is if it's stuff that can get you in big trouble then i would get rid of the drive and destroy it, you can get nice drives for really cheap now.
 
Um US gov produce is
1. Reformat drive
2. FIll drive up with nonsense data
3. Reformat
4. Repeat between 7 and a dozen times.

If extermely classified information such a CIA intel or somthing they are to toss into a highly toxic acid.

If its somthing illegal and they are long onto to you, drill holes into it, try to melt it, then rent a boat drive off into the ocean, and toss it in. Those are all excesiive means.
 
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