Hard Drive Total Wipe Help Please

[budredz]

I need to wipe a hard drive as i have a laptop from the inlaws for my daughter and i wish to have a clean slate to start with, its a celeron chip etc so not a bling laptop, i need advice as to what is the best way to do this ie best software to use and is there a free way of doing it etc. if not then ia good simple way of doing it or software purchase etc etc.

[Carbon]

http://www.dban.org/

[budredz]

Cheers, but i tried to use that and its doing my head in has anyone got anything straight forward............well straight forward for me that is

[philthomas]

What problems did you have ? .... did you burn the file correctly ?

The download Carbon suggested, is an iso file (image file) that needs to be burnt to a CD, using a program that burns images. ImgBurn is a good free package that will do the job.

Also .... silly question maybe, but you do realise this will completely wipe your hard drive clean and you will need to re-install Windows yeah ?

[budredz]

cheers phil, wiping i hope is the desired effect if i can grasp dban
After i unzipped it i have a isolinux folder do i burn the whole folder to disc or open it up and burn the contents of it ie dban.bzi , isolinux.cfg etc etc

[philthomas]

When unzipped you should have a folder named dban-beta.2007042900_i386

This will contain an iso file called dban-beta.2006042900_i386.iso ...... this is the disk image you need to burn.

Unless you have an Apple Mac of course.

[philthomas]

Just a thought .... on the website Carbon linked to, did you download this version ?

for DBAN for recent Intel and AMD computers. (You probably want this file.)

[budredz]

yes i did download that one........i assumed its right one!!!

[philthomas]

Yep ... tht's the one i.e. the iso file - dban-beta.2006042900_i386.iso

If you are still having problems, let us know at what stage you are hitting a snag and what is happenning/not happening