How do you safely erase data from your hardrive so that if you want to sell your computer the financial info wont be seen?

For windows users use 'Eraser' - software for erasing data from your computer.

According to US department of defence writing your hardrive with unrelated characters over 7 times is the safest you can get.



Use hardrive eraser software that erases your content at least 7 times to be very secure. 'eraser' is one such software (http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser) You can also try(http://dban.sourceforge.net).

For Mac users built in utility will do the job - disk utility - this post will be very helpful on this subject, in nutshell it says that - You go to 'disk utility' then go into the 'erase' tab on the drives lowest level, then security options, select 7-pass erase. click 'ok' then click 'erase'.