How do you delete EVERYTHING on a hard drive?

[nothreat33]

Hi, Great program I'm glad it's free. I'm just having one problem. When scheduling a task Eraser seems to give the option to delete a file, or files in a folder or unused hard drive space. But I don't see an option to delete all files and folder on an entire hard drive, only the unused parts of the hard drive. I'd like to use it to securely erase my windows 7 hard drive but if I select the option for the hard drive it will only erase the unused portion. Do I have to manually delete all files and THEN use Eraser on the drive? When I try to do that, it says I don't have permission for some files and folders, so i'd like to have Eraser do it if it's possible, I would hope it would be since that's kinda it's purpose.

[Joel]

You sound like you are trying to erase a Windows drive. Eraser cannot erase a system while it is running, the current workaround is to remove the disk and place it in another computer to erase the drive on.

Alternatively, you can use tools like DBAN, but that would require familiarity with booting from CDs and rather technical details about your computer (...as if the former approach didn't... but this is a system limitation that for as long Eraser depends on Windows for that we cannot run away from)

However, if you are not erasing the partition that Windows is stored on, then that's a different thing.

[curious_apprentice]

What i did last time is, first I have formatted my pc with windows Xp using NTFS slow formatting then made a update Install of Win 7 over XP.
While applying the update I formatted all the drives twice and deleted all the files/folders created by XP.

Im not sure how much this deleted the older files but I felt that somehow broking the older file structure (memory allocation table) destroys everything.

[Joel]

It does not, since the actual data is still on the disk surface. A determined adversary can gather the pieces still and piece them together.