I'm giving my SIL my old laptop. I doubt she'd ever try to bring up my deleted files, but JUST IN CASE, what's the best way to get rid of everything where they are relatively very gone? I know she'd NEVER know how to really get SUPER deleted files, so putting in a new harddrive is overkill. I've never installed an OS, so I'd probably screw it up if I formated the entire drive. :awinky:

Peaches do you have an XP cd? If so, whack that in the cd player, follow the prompts to install a fresh copy, when it warns you it's going to format, say yes please.

It really is easy, I've done it a few times now, and if I can do it, anyone can. :)

You REALLY don't want her to see those pics of my ass, eh?

That'll keep out all but the hardcore techies, but you'd be amazed how easy it is to bring those files back from the dead after a format with the right tools. :rolleyes:

It's not an XP machine - it's Win98 :(

I deleted everything "questionable" last night. I really didn't have all that much - just some websites loaded in there, but it's enough where I really don't want them seen. :unsure: How hard it is to grab things back up and can they do it accidentally?

This is a 400mhz Celeron laptop with 64MB ram. When I put out the batcall to family that it was up for grabs, my brother mentioned this has better specs than her current desktop. IOW, we're not talking big computer user here. :awinky:

Choadog - I want to leave SOME things on there - software and such. Will the low level format get rid of everything?

Yeah, completely. I believe low level format is the only type that truly gets rid of the data forever. I remember hearing about a program that wrote over all the blank space countless times so that previously deleted data couldn't be accessed (you can only go so far back, apparently). I can't think of the name, though.

Gotcha, thanks. I'm going to go ahead and delete the best way I know how and if they dig in and find something...I'll blame it on spyware :okthumb:

One of the girls at the office had a drive die on her, so when the new drive arrived I SMASHED the old one on the sidewalk... jumped on it and crushed it right there in front of everyone. Then I threw it in the trash...

Hack into that whydoncha... :nyanya:

Norton SystemWorks has a utility called disk wipe.

I do believe that's what it does.