Question by Peter Griffin: What is the best way to completely wipe out my computer’s memory?
I bought a laptop from my friend, but I want to COMPLETELY wipe out the memory before I start doing this. I basicly want nothing on there but the operating system. It is an emachines E725. Thanks!
That’s the problem…I don’t have the OS disk!

Best answer:

Answer by samantha
DBAN is a widely used program for overwriting the data on hard drives.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

–edited – you asked for the best way to wipe out the data… if you simply install the os again, you have not ‘wiped’ the disk clean.. even reformatting the drive only rewrites the file allocation table and clears the Directory Entries. it does NOT wipe all the data off the drive. DBAN will write 0’s to every bit of every sector on the drive, then 1’s then random strings across the entire drive ensuring that nothing can be salvaged from the disk with a sector editor.

for MOST purposes a low level format is sufficient. DBAN is a lot more thorough and is used for military and financial service companies, we use it for all our machines prior to sending them to surplus due to hippa concerns.

Note: If you are just wanting to reinstall the OS and not worried out “wiping out the contents” – you can go to “start/all programs.emachines, eMachines Recovery Management” and choose “restore” – then “completely restore system to factory defaults”

I would recommend creating a set of OS/restore disks from the same utility as well prior to attempting the reinstall by going to the “backup” option then “Create Factory Default Disk” and “Create Drivers and Applications Disk”. – Then store those disks in a safe place so you can reinstall if you ever have a drive failure.

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