Ernie S.
Diamond Member
The easiest way is to have your computer boot from CD/DVD drive, insert the disc with the operating system you want on it and reboot. When the installation setup starts it will give you formating/erasing options, select the one you want and continue with the installation.
One thing to keep in mind is some computers use proprietary drivers to make your hardware run properly so you will want that, either on a disc that came with the computer or you'll have to download them from the makers website and save them to a CD/DVD.
This is specifically true if you're installing a fresh Windows OS, if it's Linux Ubuntu or Mint then you won't have to worry about that.
Well...you can still recover data from a drive even after a full format.
They said "make it so it is impossible to recover anything" - well the only real way to do that is to physically destroy the drive itself.
Not quite. It's true that formatting doesn't remove anything but essentially the index. The data is still there, but the record of it and it's location is gone. Computer forensics can recover the data, but it's an expensive undertaking and not something someone purchasing a used computer would likely have done.
If there is data that you absolutely can't risk being recovered, the only way to destroy it is to format and then write over it.