How to Completely Format a Hard Drive

Selling your computer? I wouldn't; until you completely format your hard drive. Even completely re-installing your operating system will sometimes leave critical data, such as credit card numbers or phone numbers on the disk.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 
    
   Be sure to download from a location near you!

   Go to the Ubuntu download link (listed in resources.) Download the newest version with 32-bit architecture (unless you know that you have a 64-bit computer.) And burn the image to a disk.

2. 
    
   Looks odd, doesn't it?

   Reboot. If everything went alright, you should be seeing a "live CD." Follow the easy instructions and you should soon see a desktop like in the photo.

3. 
    

   Click on applications, go to the accessories submenu, and click on terminal.

4. WARNING! THIS STEP WILL COMPLETELY ERASE ALL DATA, INCLUDING YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM!
   
   In the terminal, copy and paste this following command and press enter:
   
   sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda
   
   And wait for it to finish. What this does is take every bite of your hard drive and change it to a random value, effectively making it all useless and unreadable.

5. Either continue using the live CD to install the latest Ubuntu version or Reboot with a Windows install disk.

Tips & Warnings

• Give Ubuntu a chance as an operating system! You may like it. Fiddle around with the Live CD a bit.
• Only do this if you want your ENTIRE hard drive COMPLETELY erased! I can not stress this enough!

Resources

• Download Ubuntu!

[bradleesand]

on 6/20/2009 Don't just use that command as it is! '/dev/hda' might not be the drive you want to erase. Use GParted (System>Administration>Partition Manager) to identify the drive that you want to nuke.