Beginner Help (and problems)

[stinkyfete]

Hi guys,

first time posting on the forums. I apologize ahead of time if any of these questions seem repetitive but I did a quick look and couldn't seem to find a straightforward answer on some of my questions so I was hoping I cuold get them by posting myself.


I am trying to wipe my computer/hard drive so that I can sell my laptop. Here's a couple questions I have.

1) How do I wipe my entire computer of information? As of right now I have set up a task to erase unused disk space on C drive and Recycle Bin. Is this correct? Or is it not what I should be doing. I want to be as thorough as possible.

2) How long does a complete wipe take? I have tried only a single pass erasing unused disk space on the C drive and it has taken almost a day. And I'm not even sure it did the job as it was stuck on 89.8% for a couple hours. When I went to sleep and woke up the next morning, it seems the computer restarted.

3) How do I check to make sure the eraser program has actually completed the process and how do I check and make sure all my sensitive info has been erased?


As of right now those are the main questions I have right now. I tried reading the Help section on the Eraser program but it wasn't really clear to me how to completely erase a hard drive even after reading it. Basically I just want to make sure I'm doing everything I need to to completely wipe the hard drive and if possible I'd like to know if there's a way to double check.


Along with these questions, I've run into a couple problems when trying to use eraser.

Every once in a while I run into a couple errors. Main ones being:

The program is in used
the program does not have access to erase (Even when I'm running in administrator mode?)

and most recently, my hard drive is full??? Before I used the Eraser program I formatted my computer so no extra programs were installed and I didn't even have a full hard drive when I was using the computer. what happened??


Thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help me out. Sorry again if these sound like dumb questions but thanks for being patient

 

[DavidHB]

Please go to the FAQ (link below). There are two topics entitled 'Getting to know Eraser 6' and 'Common Eraser Questions', which, I think, will give you most of what you need. If, after reading them, you have some more specific questions, please come back with those.

The best procedure for cleaning a laptop you want to dispose of is usually the following:

• use the program or restore disk provided by the manufacturer to restore the machine to factory condition (the hard drive will be formatted as part of this process);
• if (as for example with some Acer machines) there is a separate data drive/partition, quick format that drive also;
• install Eraser on the machine and run a free space erase on the system drive, and on any other drives or partitions there may be on it.

David