Photo by Jeff Epp

Photo by Jeff Epp

If you’re going to donate your old PC or sell it, make sure you don’t leave any personal information on the hard drive. The open-source [free for personal use] DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) will completely and securely wipe your computer’s hard drive.

Another occasion to use DBAN is to completely destroy a virus. While this is a drastic measure, there are some cases when a computer can be infected with a virus so pesky that it can survive a hard drive format. In other words, if you’re dealing with a nasty virus and decide to simply format the drive and reinstall Windows, you might still be facing that virus after all that work. If you’re going to go to the trouble of reinstalling Windows, use DBAN to completely wipe the hard drive clean first.

Preparing Your DBAN Media More >