Beginner Help (and problems)

stinkyfete

New Member
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
 
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
 
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