How can I get windows to die?

[nibbler]

I have a computer that I'm splitting up and selling. It has a boot drive ssd with a few other files and then a large 500gb hard drive for media/etc. How can I format this drive? Should I go to bios?

Alternatively I could just completely format everything, and tell windows to wipe all the hard drives, although I realise that's like asking windows to shoot itself in the head though... any ideas?

[Agent]

Use the Ultimate Boot CD - boot from it and then use one of the many utilities which will allow you to wipe the drives

It'll boot from a CD, so it'll be able to handle all drives in the system.

Keep in mind that a format will not be enough to kill your data if someone wants to get it back. You should use one of the proper wiping utilities present on the disk.

[Vimeous]

DBan - Darik's Boot and Nuke is also a popular choice.

As Agent says a format is not enough.

[Agent]

Just a quick note - DBan is on the UBCD, which in itself is always worth having a copy about

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Chuck a brick through it??

[oolon]

Personally I never get rid of hard drives, when I am finished with them I either remove the platters for my coaster collection or put a power drill through them.

[Vimeous]

I gave the last lot of old drives to our toolroom apprentices to see how they get on.
I got a box of bits back - some disks shattered, some they'd attacked with tin-snips.
Frankly while amusing it was a poor showing and they'd not done enough damage to the disks for me to release them back into the wild.

I was hoping a die-punch through the centre spindle would do but it just bends modern platters.
An industrial shredder/pluverisor looks like the next best option short of finding a incinerator to Terminate the sturdy little beggers.

[nibbler]

As useful as these comments are, I'm not actually planning on destroying my computer

I think I've sorted it so should all be hunky dory

Thanks for the rather extreme advice

[jim]

The format command behavior has changed in Windows Vista. By default in Windows Vista, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. In Windows XP and in earlier versions of the Windows operating system, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed.

Can't see what more you need than that, unless someone wants to hurl some evidence at me