Need some help.

What is the best way to completely wipe out a hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Is it your boot drive or an additional drive?

I assume you mean scrub the surface. Look for software that will write zeros to the disk. You can usually get free software from the disk manufacturer website.

If you mean removing partition and formatting then just use Disk Management in W2K or XP. Right click My Computer then select Manage.

For example Maxtor call their software PowerMAX.

There is a freeware called Disk Kill, though I have never used it.

If you are dumping an old machine and don't want any personal data to be retrieved, get a big hammer...

If you want to overwrite or "erase" your hard drive info,
have a look at this free software download program called "eraser".
http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

What is the best way to completely wipe out a hard drive.

Like Filper said, use a sledgehammer if you really are concerned.

I myself use a chisel and pierce it in the middle... :o

take out all the screws and then use a grinder on the plates...

None of us here have anything that serious to hide, do we? ;)

I haven't used any of the stuff mentioned and have always used fdisk.

I always thought it was enough.

with FDISK the contents of the files remain on the disk. Just the organisational information of the disk is removed. That is how Disk Doctor and others can pull files from drives when the partitions have gone belly up.

So can files be pulled from a hdd that has been fdisked and then formatted? I thought drives were empty once that was done.

I guess anyone who has really "sensitive" material has to be really careful.

When you format or FDISK a disk, all that's done is the allocation table is reset, marking previously written to areas as available. The actual data is still there. It's like ripping out the index of a book but leaving the actual text pages in place.

Even when using programs to overwrite data with zeros, you need to do it multiple times to make sure any residual magnetic fields are completely wiped out. There are people and programs that can pull even the weakest residual off drives. As was stated earlier, the only way to completely wipe out data is to physically destroy the disk into thousands of little pieces.

There's a neat little program called Darik's Boot and Nuke (http://dban.sourceforge.net/) it's free, goes on a floppy and will completely wipe out your HDD when you boot from it. Fun at parties! :D

If Linux is your thing, check out the "shred" command. Works on files and raw block devices (eg. /dev/hda).

None of us here have anything that serious to hide, do we? ;)
Anything that has private info is a good enough reason for me to destroy my drive. I don't want others to know my bank accounts or the likes of it.

With the "Eraser" program I mentioned in the above post, it gives you the option of "overwriting the disc" either 10X or 48X, depending on how serious you are. The 48X will take a lot longer time to do, of course.

I have this big heavy black box that I got from my old employer. It puts out a huge EM field. IT draws 7 amps. It will stop digital clocks in the room if you are not careful! :o I used it yesterday when I was getting rid of hundreds of floppies. I put it in the basement, stacked up 10 floppies at a time, threw the switch and covered my boys with tinfoil :D It sure is quick.

Like somone else said it would be a blast to have at a LAN party.

threw the switch and covered my boys with tinfoil

... better use leadfoil.

12 gauge...believe me it'll work real good.