Selling your old computer? It can be easy to forget that some of your most personal data is saved on the hard drive.

With over 50% of UK adults now using computers to shop online, deleting the data off your hard drive has never been more important.

It is important to securely delete any data before disposing a hard drive to ensure that a geek can’t retrieve any of your credit card information or private documents if they somehow get their sweaty hands on it!

Don’t panic, there is no need for expensive machinery – You can securely format a hard drive easily using the right software :)

Active@ KillDisk is a brilliant piece of software which allows you to format your hard drive using the one pass method for absolutely free.

Although the one pass format method makes it almost impossible for the data that was previously stored on there to be recovered, there is a premium version of the software that includes multi pass formatting methods as well as data verification.

The KillDisk suite includes both Windows and DOS versions of the software, both are useful for different situations:

Running KillDisk in Windows:

The Windows version of KillDisk has a simple interface that allows the user to wipe or completely “Kill” a hard drive with just a few clicks of the mouse.

This is a great solution if your objective is to format a old hard drive that you don’t use anymore, just connect it to your computer either inside the case or using an external caddy.
Once Windows has detected the hard drive, give the KillDisk software a launch! You can select the hard drive on the left and then use the “Wipe” or “Kill” buttons in the toolbar.

Running KillDisk in DOS:

The only limitation with the Windows version of KillDisk is that it’s impossible to format a hard drive that you are currently using as Windows is stored on there – Lucky the DOS version still has a friendly interface!

The KillDisk suite includes a boot disk creator, the wizard copies the necessary files onto a USB stick or a CD that you can boot from.

Once you have your bootable media ready, restart your computer and enter the boot menu.
Different computers have different keypress to go to bootmenu. Try DEL, F8 or F12 as these are the most common.

Once the software has loaded, press the down arrow key to select Active KILLDISK