what is the best WAY to clean a DISC???

I am using a program called P-Magic which is cool to use :) All in one tool

Downloads

Steve

Speaking of hard drives, it also depends if by "clean" the op means securely (destructively) erase so that the original data cannot thereafter be recovered by any means. If that is what the OP meant by "clean" then there are several utilities that will perform this operation with varying degrees of user selectable thoroughness. I bet there are some free utilities that can do this but off the top of my head, the ones that come to mind are the "file/disk shredder" utility in "Acronis True Image Home" (under disk utilities) and a similar function residing in an app called "Tuneup Utilities 2010."

harpua said:

Speaking of hard drives, it also depends if by "clean" the op means securely (destructively) erase so that the original data cannot thereafter be recovered by any means. If that is what the OP meant by "clean" then there are several utilities that will perform this operation with varying degrees of user selectable thoroughness. I bet there are some free utilities that can do this but off the top of my head, the ones that come to mind are the "file/disk shredder" utility in "Acronis True Image Home" (under disk utilities) and a similar function residing in an app called "Tuneup Utilities 2010."

DBAN is the one I have used, quite successfully.

~Lordbob

He said "disc" not disk. Gosh, I hope he doesn't take his HDD apart and wash it in alcohol.

HMonk said:

He said "disc" not disk. Gosh, I hope he doesn't take his HDD apart and wash it in alcohol.

I think there is another Thread about alcohol & computers not mixing

Beer and PC's do not mix...

Lordbob75 said:

harpua said:

Speaking of hard drives, it also depends if by "clean" the op means securely (destructively) erase so that the original data cannot thereafter be recovered by any means. If that is what the OP meant by "clean" then there are several utilities that will perform this operation with varying degrees of user selectable thoroughness. I bet there are some free utilities that can do this but off the top of my head, the ones that come to mind are the "file/disk shredder" utility in "Acronis True Image Home" (under disk utilities) and a similar function residing in an app called "Tuneup Utilities 2010."

DBAN is the one I have used, quite successfully.

~Lordbob

DBAN sounds good if one wants to wipe the entire drive (and thanks for the recommendation), however, it should also be noted that these other utilities I mentioned above have the added advantage that they can be used to selectively wipe specific folders (optionally including sub-folders) or files rather than only the entire drive. This can be very handy if one only needs to securely erase, say a particular user account and perhaps wants to keep the machines on disk recovery software operational, so that immediately after one has securely erased only the sensitive data residing on the drive, (which likely would also be faster than wiping the entire drive), one can then recover the computer for sale or return. I have found this particular sequence of operations to be very convenient on several occasions recently where I wanted to get the erasing done quickly and return a machine with the factory load installed and didn't want to have to burn the recovery disks.

and the thread starter missing in action