Hiya,Comp Boffins,any of you guys know of a free download programme too deep clean my hard drive.eg, get rid of past fotos,info,and general s*it that's not wanted anymore after being deleted??.

Thanks

Hiya,Comp Boffins,any of you guys know of a free download programme too deep clean my hard drive.eg, get rid of past fotos,info,and general s*it that's not wanted anymore after being deleted??.

Thanks

Search for low level format. If you want to be sure, take out the old hard drive and say 'hello' to it a few times with a hammer and drop it in the ocean.

New hard disks are really cheap, so if it is very important data you are trying to protect it is really not worth the risk IMO.

You can use eraser (available from it's homepage or download.com)if you are still using the hard drive and want to overwrite the free space or delete files, or dban if you want to overwrite the entire drive. A 3 pass overwrite is more than enough on modern hard drives.

Depends how deep you want to go and what exactly you are trying to achieve.

Low level format as mentioned in the first response above will take off everything including the operating system etc. that you are using. So don't do this if you need to keep some of the computer's software in place.

If it is just free space you want - simply deleting the old stuff from Explorer and removing unwanted programs from within the Control Panel will achieve free space on the hard disk.

If you seek to ensure that the files in question are not able to be recovered using technical tools there are many file destroyer type programmes availible here is a link that I found in a quick search.

After a long session of deleting files and programs by either method mentioned, use of a defrag tool (built in to most Windows Operating Systems) will also overwrite the exact locations on the Hard Disk that were previous used to record the files that you wish to obliterate. This will make it effectively impossible to recover any file that had been deleted.

HTH

Here are some, I used one a while back but can't remember which one I used now.

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/200...-HDD-Wipe-Tool/

http://www.dban.org/

http://summitcn.com/download2.htm

http://www.howtowipeyourdrive.com/HowToWip...rHardDrive.aspx

--damole

If your wanting to destroy old data, then I agree with niller4.

I mean, you can get Terrabyte hard drives now for less than a hundred quid (in the UK)

Otherwise put, you can totally destroy your hardrive physically (sledgehammer are great ) and get a TB for the price that a 100GB was 2/3 years ago.