How can I format/wipe my harddrive with a broken video card?

My GPU burnt out and I'm selling my laptop. I need to get all my private data erased from the HDD before I hand it over to someone else, but I can't see a dang thing because there is no video. How can I wipe the drive without damaging it?

EDIT: specs of old laptop are in the sig. I'm assuming both my present laptop is SATAII like the old one.

 

pull the hard drive, hook it up to another machine with a usb adapter dongle (cost about $30), and format it that way (as an external drive on the other machine).

Anyone who works on their own machines should have one of those usb/hard drive adapter dongles anyway. The current ones hook up to old IDE, more modern IDE, and SATA drives. Includes a small power brick to run the drive and might also include an adapter cable or two to take care of any weird drives you might run across.

 

yeah I don't have one of those and I don't want to drop $30 on one since I will never use it again. I do have an external enclosure but it's for 3.5 inch drives, so I imagine it won't fit. I also have a new laptop I got to replace it but I'm not sure the harddrive is removable. Would I be able to format the drive by putting it into the new laptop? Any other ideas? I'm trying to get this done today.

 

I wouldn't try putting into your new laptop, besides you haven't given us enough information to answer your question. We don't even know if the two HD are of the same type. i.e. IDE, SATA.

The HD isn't going to be of much use to the new owner until the laptop GPU is repaired. Knock off $30 and sell the laptop to the new owner sans HD and then just destroy it or keep it in case you eventually do get another external enclosure.

 

both harddrives are SATAII. Didn't know they made IDE harddrives in the last several years. Specs of the old laptop are in my sig. The buyer is buying with the understanding that the GPU needs repair, I'm hesitant to tell them there's another part they can't have.

 

You didn't say how old the laptop was you were selling, I have two defective older laptops both of which have IDE HD's.

Anyway, you could put the old HD into your new Sager if you wish and then use a free program such as DBAN to create a boot disk which will 'Boot and Nuke' the data on your old HD.

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

 

Put it in your new laptop and nuke it, it's not going to damage your new laptop in any way...and of course the HDD is removable in your new laptop.