How Do I Wipe My Hardrive

I was wondering how do I wipe my hardrive or is it called reformatting? Anyway i have Windows XP and the format of the harddrive or drive is NTFS. I have done this before, but have totally forgot what is required to do so.

That actually depends. If you want to reformat it, insert the Windows XP CD into your drive and follow the instructions for installing XP. It should give you the option of formating the drive. There are also 3rd party programs that can effectively erase all personal data so that it cannot be recovered by anyone (A reformat does not neccessarily ensure data cannot be retrieved).

If you are going to sell the computer, I suggest that you wipe it like jd said. set your first boot device to cd rom. put the windows cd in there, and bootfrom it. follow the steps, delete the partition, and make another partition and install windows . thats ti.

yeah i want to wipe my drive and erase all data from it. so i just insert the cd and reinstall and it gives me the option to reformat? and whats with the partition thing and how do i do this?

it splits your drive into multple parts so you can organize stuff on it or install multiple os'es.

If you are not going to do a multiple operating system boot then make only ONE partition with the max space you can. If you are going to do Windows XP and Ubuntu and Vista then make 3 partitions.

do i need to make a new partition in the first place? I have 2 harddrives and only want to reformat one of them

If you only want to format one of them then in the format part of setup itwill show both drives and you choose which one to format + install the os on. thats it. if you choose the main one your good to go. Its usually C: but can be reversed

k thank you very much for your help