Ask a Geek: How Can I Permanently Delete My Computer Files?

Make sure nobody will ever see your classified documents. Before you sell, donate, or recycle your old computer, beware: You may be handing personal information to strangers. Simply restoring the operating system to factory settings does not delete all data and neither does formatting the hard drive before reinstalling the OS. To really wipe a drive clean, users will need to run secure-erase software. For Windows, the best bet is the command-line utility SDelete (free), which writes over the spa...