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    Software to *really* erase a HD, and to free up a different HD

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by sfoanna, Apr 9, 2008.

  1. sfoanna

    sfoanna Notebook Geek

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    Hi,

    #1. I am donating a desktop to my son's school and I need to completely erase the hard drive, can anyone recommend a software? (a free one would be great!)

    #2. I have only a 70 gig HD on my Lenovo T60 and having a tough time. It only has 10 gb open, and defrag won't run. I only have a few data files, I already removed the music and pix, etc. And I've removed every program that I dare, but I suspect that there's spyware or something that's eating up the HD. Any suggestions with this?

    Thanks!!!
    Anna
     
    sfoanna, Apr 9, 2008
    #1
  2. Crimsonman

    Crimsonman Ex NBR member :cry:

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    Crimsonman, Apr 9, 2008
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  3. yuio

    yuio NBR Assistive Tec. Tec.

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    or a hammer... lol, yah try killdisk.
     
    yuio, Apr 9, 2008
    #3
  4. flipfire

    flipfire Moderately Boss

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    Download Ccleaner, its a free program that clears out useless crap. Very good program to have
     
    flipfire, Apr 9, 2008
    #4
  5. wuzertheloser

    wuzertheloser Notebook Deity

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    try clearing out the previous restore points....that should free up maybe 5GB. do you have the Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery running? If so, that makes back ups of the hard drives every so often....so that may be taking up space. Also, the hidden partition to do a factory restore may be there...so that should take up a few more gigs.

    If you don't need anything important on the computer, I suggest a clean install as that's probably the easiest way to go.
     
    wuzertheloser, Apr 9, 2008
    #5
  6. aan310

    aan310 Notebook Virtuoso

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    DBAN is best from my personal experiance. i ran it 2 times juse to make sure...
     
    aan310, Apr 9, 2008
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  7. sfoanna

    sfoanna Notebook Geek

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    Thanks everyone. I should have put up two different posts. For #1, the donation computer, would I download the Killdisk or DBAN and then run the program, and it would wipe out the HD? Thanks.
     
    sfoanna, Apr 10, 2008
    #7
  8. frazell

    frazell Notebook Deity

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    DBAN is by far the best choice!

    Download it, burn it to a cd, run it...

    With one click you can do a good enough whipe without much hassle..

    http://dban.sourceforge.net/
     
    frazell, Apr 10, 2008
    #8