What is the best way to clean an old PC hard drive?

Answer by  Miffy (216)

The best way if you want to remove absolutely everything is to reformat the drive. Just remember to back up any files you want to keep first!

Answer by  Quual (161)

Exterior : Compressed air, note: a 60 PSI air compressor works a lot better than a can of compressed air. Wipe with soft dry cloth. Operating system runs slower and slower. Best option : Format and re-install. Non-destructive file clean up : The CCleaner Utility. Securely wipe personal data : SDelete from Windows Sysinternals

Answer by  gheesh (59)

Use a LiveCD Linux distro to boot the computer and completely wipe the disk with the command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (where hda is the device you want to erase).

Answer by  louie (20)

Re-formatting of the disk drive is better than just deleting files and emptying your Recycle Bin since doing so would just free up the logical address of the file and can still be recovered using software tools.

Answer by  M85 (172)

Simple: You don't. If you want to, you can vacuum or dust inside the computer, but don't open the hard drive, you will likely break it.

Answer by  Erick13 (24)

The beast way to clean an old drive is to use a program like Kill Disk to format the drive. Kill Disk will completely overwrite every sector on the hard drive. It can be done to Dept of Defense specs to keep it from have any data recovered on it.

Answer by  Liz59 (10966)

If you want to clean out the hard drive, you may want to attach it into another computer and then you can go out emptying the files.

Answer by  Kit (558)

Reloading Windows is the best opt. Or Use Disk Cleanup tool found under systems Tools in accessories. Try to Disk Defragment, by usings Microsoft disk defragmenter.Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Run Error Checking - Click Run... type: cmd. In the black window, type chkdsk /r/f

Answer by  Bo99 (392)

The best way i know is to do a format, but doing a slow and complete one. To do it, go on desktop, and do a right click on the "C" hard disk, then with a check, choose the slow and complete format. That way, you can be sure that everything that was on your HD is gone.