Erasing a Hard Drive??

I am going to give my old machine away to the local Mounted Patrol troop if they want it. It is still a good machine, but I feared the HD might go out within a year or so. Good excuse to buy a new one.

I had thought that it might be necessary to destroy the HD so that no information could be retrieved. However, I have learned that there are programs that write over and erase the HD. Here is one of several that I have seen.

What are the best ones either free or buy? Will they do what I am wanting to prevent any retrieval of data on the machine?

Thanbks,
Jerry

 

you might check here and here the second one is free


bigc

 

Many thanks. I did not realize that the erase tools could erase only that which one specifies. I thought it was all or nothing.

Jerry