Best Way to Clean Hard Drive [duplicate]

Solution 1:

In Windows, you can use the Disk Management tool to view all your drives.

You can right-click on the drives and partitions to Delete Partitions, Format, etc.

If you format, you can choose "Quick Format" but it will not overwrite your files. If you uncheck "Quick Format", it will overwrite all your files. Note, this can take hours on large drives.

You can get there from Administrative tools, by opening Computer Management, or run diskmgmt.msc

Solution 2:

I would just re-partition using diskmgmt.msc and re-format. If you want to overwite each sector there's loads of disk shredders out there but you could just use linux and use "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb" substituting the right letter in sdb.

Solution 3:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX

You will then need to repartition, using your tool of choice.