best way to wipe personal data from Hard drive wo deleting windows

Im told a program called recuva can wipe the files. and ccleaner can wipe free space. is their something else I should be doing or using to remove personal data from the hard drive?

i've heard of dban but its a little complicated and I really dont want to remove windows and have to reinstall it. any tips are appreciated. :)

CCleaner free version has an option to wipe free space. Delete personal files and run.

There is another program called eraser that will do the same thing.

If your PC has a recovery partition you should be able to boot into recovery and this will reset the PC to an 'Out of the box state'.

Why do you feel you need to wipe unused drive space? This is not really necessary. The only reasons to wipe a drive is to make data unrecoverable or clear boot code causing installation problems.

gregrocker said:

Why do you feel you need to wipe unused drive space? This is not really necessary. The only reasons to wipe a drive is to make data unrecoverable or clear boot code causing installation problems.

making data unrecoverable is what im after. im going to sell the pc or give it away.