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"  I&amp;#039;m selling my computer and want to erase it before delivering it to its next owner. How can I make sure it&amp;#039;s totally, irreversibly wiped clean?  To return the computer to its blank-slate state, you&amp;#039;ll need to do four things: Back it up (please!), erase the drive, reformat it, and reinstall the operating system.   If your computer is running Windows 7, you&amp;#039;ll need a copy of the operating system, which you likely got on a USB drive or DVD when you bought the computer. If you don&amp;#039;t have it, though, you&amp;#039;re not out of luck. You can download a copy from Digital River (both for the 32-bit version; and the 64-bit, both legitimate ways to get a new copy of the OS that you paid for when you purchased the machine) and install it on a USB drive with at least 4 GB of space with the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. To activate the downloaded OS, use your Windows 7 Product Keyfind it on a sticker on your computer or with the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder program.   After ensuring you have a bootable version of the OS, erase the hard drive using DBAN. Download the program, copy it to another USB drive with the USB/DVD tool, and restart your computer with the drive plugged in. Then follow the onscreen prompts and wait several hours as the computer churns away, deleting everything. You&amp;#039;re now finally ready to boot directly from the Windows 7 installer. With Windows 8, Microsoft makes this drawn-out process a lot easier. Just head to the General section of Change PC Settings and choose Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows. To be safe, erase the data &amp;quot;thoroughly,&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;quickly.&amp;quot; The computer will erase the drive, reformat, and automatically install a new copy of the OS.   The process for readying a Mac for sale is similar in theory but different in practice. On an Apple computer running Macintosh OS Lion or Mountain Lion, you don&amp;#039;t need the system disk, but for earlier Mac systems, you do. Start up your computer from the recovery partition, holding down the command and R keys as the computer restarts, and open Disk Utility. Under the Erase tab&amp;#039;s security options choose 7-Pass Erase, which writes over your data seven times. After erasing is completeit can take several hoursquit Disk Utility, make sure you&amp;#039;re connected to the Internet, and choose Reinstall Mac OS X. If you&amp;#039;re running an earlier version of OS X, follow the same steps but start by putting the system disk in the drive and restarting the computer while holding down the C key "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/a3252/how-to-wipe-your-computer-before-you-sell-it-15780981/>