How to Clear a Hard Drive

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to show you how to clear a hard drive. That's typically a good idea when you're done with your computer completely, you replaced it, if you're going to give it to somebody or you're going to put it in the yard sale or what not, to completely erase the data on your hard drive. That way nobody can get access to the personal files that you were working on. I suggest use a program called Darik's Boot and Nuke; that's a completely free program. You can download it from dban.org and just burn it to a CD, there's no charges and it works great. Once you basically burn that program to a CD, just pop it in your computer and just boot up your computer. Now it's going to go through the normal boot up process, but instead of loading up Windows, it's going to load up this Darik's Boot and Nuke program. And so here we have it. This is the Darik's Boot and Nuke screen and it basically gives you instructions for, for what it does and how to use it. And all you need to do if you want to completely wipe out your hard drive is type, autonuke; a-u-t-o-n-u-k-e and press the enter key. Now it's important to note that once you press that enter key, it's going to begin. There's no more click here to continues or are you sure, it's going to completely wipe out your hard drive and it's going to do it in using a Department of Defense standard that is basically completely unrecoverable. My name is Dave Andrews and I've just showed you how to completely wipe a hard drive."