How to erase drive before donating?

In this article let’s see what’s the best and simplest way to erase all the programs on the hard drive and clean drive so that it’s available for donation?

Frequently we hear of computers donated by banks, hospitals, or other institutions turning up with all sorts of private information that should have been erased first.

Ways to wipe out data:

Windows has an option to perform “Quick format”.
In reality, a quick format just creates an empty root directory on the hard disk and adds a label to it. The rest of the disk is assumed to be properly formatted already and leaves it untouched. That’s why the name ‘Quick format’.
For this reason it is considered to be insecure. Since the rest of the disk is left untouched, any data that may already have been there will remain as it is. And the data from a quick formatted disk can easily be recovered using a disk recovery tool.
Reformatting the disk
In this process an unconditional format is carried out, where you can change the file system types, allocation sizes and whatever other parameters you have control over. Even after performing these operations, it’s theoretically as well as practically possible to recover data even after a disk has been unconditionally formatted.
Physically destroy the disk
This option can be chosen only when there is no further intension to donate the computer.

So, now the best and also secure way to erase drive is to overwrite the hard drive locations occupied by deleted data with new or junk content.

Remo Data Sanitizer is one such utility that will completely erase the contents of sensitive data from either, physical drive or selected logical drives.

It is equipped with nine sanitization standards for disk wiping. Select any one file sanitization method, based on desired security level. For normal security level, “fast zero overwrite” method would be sufficient, but if you want to thoroughly erase a drive’s contents, with several overwriting methods, you may go for any high security level sanitization standard.

Special FX Data Recovery