Erase hard disk of Wordpad docs

petempls · 16 Jul 2011

What's the best way, if any, to safely erase wordpad documents from an old computer. I know that just running the old restore disc doesn't do that. Somebody who knows what they're doing could still hack into those old files on her hard disk. My sister wants to sell her old XP computer, but I told her she should either just recycle it/destroy it (safest way) ...... or we should try to erase any confidential info on it first! The first thing I've tried doing is simply writing over those files and saving them with the same file name, hoping this will destroy any prior information on the hard disk and thus make any old info unretreivable. But I'm still not 100% certain! Is there any software (Disk Sanitizer?) that might help?

Lomai · 16 Jul 2011

petempls said:

What's the best way, if any, to safely erase wordpad documents from an old computer. I know that just running the old restore disc doesn't do that. Somebody who knows what they're doing could still hack into those old files on her hard disk. My sister wants to sell her old XP computer, but I told her she should either just recycle it/destroy it (safest way) ...... or we should try to erase any confidential info on it first! The first thing I've tried doing is simply writing over those files and saving them with the same file name, hoping this will destroy any prior information on the hard disk and thus make any old info unretreivable. But I'm still not 100% certain! Is there any software (Disk Sanitizer?) that might help?

Hi

Have a look at the following thread:

How to Completely Erase Your Hard Drives, SSDs and Thumb Drives

Hope this helps and regards