Have you downloaded illegal music? Maybe you just don't want your new girlfriend to see "those" pictures of your old girlfriend.
Computer sterilization could be the answer.
Computer sterilization involves completely erasing the hard drive of your PC, or laptop, beyond any means of forensic recovery. There are free programs online that claim to do this without wiping out your operating system, but that is not actually possible.
When you delete a file in Windows, it is simply taken from your view, and marked to be overwritten. Even when it is overwritten, it is still there just under that new file, and it can be recovered. The only way to sterilize a hard drive is to wipe the whole thing with a minimum of 10 overwrites. The Department of Defense method is 7 overwrites, but I recommend 10 minimum.
The process I use runs the Gutmann method. The Gutmann method actually overwrites the data 35 times. This is excruciatingly slow, but very effective. Just ask any data recovery company if they can recover 35 layers down.
There are several companies offering this service now. Most also offer "confidentiality statements," meaning they won't make a copy of your hard drive, or anything on it, before they sterilize it.
With all the crackdowns on illegal music downloading, and those intimate pictures that may, or may not be on your computer, sterilization is worth checking into. If you bought, or intend to buy a used computer, I strongly recommend having it sterilized. You just never know what they did with it.
No matter what your reasons are, if you are going to sterilize your computer, do it right. Have a professional use the Gutmann Method on it, and be sure you have those recovery disks when they are done wiping.
Ross Valigura is the owner of several websites and a computer repair service
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