How to Clean an entire disc (whole C: drive)

[dummy101]

The Eraser User Guide mentions in its last sentence to “consider erasing the entire drive.” But then, it does not describe how to do this. I do not see any mention of making a drive a “Target” such as entering: C:\*.*

Please provide or point me to how to clean an entire C: drive. If this has to be done from a separate drive, my machine to be erased has a USB 2.0 port and a CD drive. Please provide step-by-step instructions for a non-technical user!

 

[DavidHB]

Eraser runs (of course) under Windows, so it cannot completely erase your system (C drive; it would then have to erase itself and the operating system it is running on, which is clearly not feasible. What you need to do depends to some extent on why you are trying to erase drive C:.

Normally, for a machine you are going to dispose of which has a recovery disk and/or partition (that is most laptops and some branded desktops), I suggest restoring the machine to factory condition (which will quick format the drive), then installing Eraser and erasing free space on the drive.

If you want a completely clean drive, you can use DBAN (see the separate forum on that), but that is not really the non technical solution you are looking for, and it does not work on all machines. The solution using Eraser may also be outside your comfort zone. It is

• remove the hard drive from your machine;
• put it in a USB hard drive caddy and attach it to another machine which has Eraser installed;
• quick format the drive;
• erase the free space (which in this case is all the space) on the drive;
• replace the drive in your machine and (presumably) reinstall Windows etc.

This is a summary, which does not deal, for example, with the case where the drive has more than one partition. I really need to know more of your intentions before giving more specific advice than this.

David