Many people wonder how to securely wipe a hard drive before it is shredded. This extra step can provide further peace of mind. A free open source utility called DBAN can be used to digitally shred a hard drive. You can find this utility at http://www.dban.org.
How does this utility work? The Wikipedia article on DBAN explains how: "The program is designed to securely erase a hard disk until data is permanently removed and no longer recoverable, which is achieved by overwriting the data with random numbers......
DBAN can be booted from a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive and it is based on Linux. It supports PATA (IDE), SCSI and SATA hard drives. DBAN can be configured to automatically wipe every hard disk that it sees on a system, making it very useful for unattended data destruction scenarios. DBAN exists for Intel x86 and PowerPC systems.
DBAN, like other methods of data destruction, is suitable for use prior to computer recycling for personal or commercial situations, such as donating or selling a computer[2]. In the case of malware infection, DBAN can be used before returning a disk to production."
Give it a try.
Integra Document Destruction
