How to give away old computers without risking identity theft from the personal id info on your hard

We just upgraded our computers and were about to donate the old computers to Salvation Army when our neighbor advised us to destroy the hard drives and hence the files in the hard drive before we do so. Seems to be such a waste of still very good computers. Any way out of this? Is there a software that will delete personal and other files in the hard drive?

How to give away old computers without risking identity theft from the personal id info on your hard drive?best antivirus software

Free %26 effective enough to permanently erase data ... unless you are donating them to the FBI forensics lab ... LOL (even then ...small chance).

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

regards,

Philip T

How to give away old computers without risking identity theft from the personal id info on your hard drive?firewall

DBAN is the way to go as others have said. As for formatting the drive, this is still going to leave files behind that are easily recovered. I recently threw out a box of old hard drives and decided to render them useless with a vice and hammer.
format all the hard-disk-drives in the computer. if you do it correctly, the computer can still be used. though you have to re-install an operating system.