What will erasing my HDD do for me?

[paidbyhalf13]

Wanted a reliable input on how i go about really making sure my hard drive can be erased/reformatted back to a worry-free factory-type condition where i know i have a fresh start. I am going to be upgrading XP to windows 7 soon but i also dont want any viruses in my hard drive after the install. i do sophos rootkit and Avira virus scans. and they have caught a trojan before and quarantined it. Now i'm concern there might be something hidden in my registries and want to know if i should just overwrite my hard drive with software like "Active kill disk hard drive eraser" or can reformatting/clean install to windows 7 be good enough? Thank you. I'll take all advice coming my way =)

 

[silversurfernhs]

running ccleaner and using its drive wipe tool, after also doing a full erase - then doing a full format should do the trick if your super anal retentive about it,

but a simple format upon installing windows is fine for the masses...

 

[silversurfernhs]

also acronis disk manager is a one stop for all that kinda junk - works great for that kind of stuff and more - but for the simple formatting of a hdd, you can use disk management...

 

[paidbyhalf13]

cool, ty

 

[aford10]

Acronis true image, and Norton ghost are very nice backup utilities.

If you want to check for viruses/malware, run through the malware guide in my signature.

 

[Snipergod87]

WHen you install windows it will give you an option to reformat, you can just do it there and they will be gone.

 

[paidbyhalf13]

Best answer selected by paidbyhalf13.

 

[paidbyhalf13]

Thank you for everyone's suggestions and links. I have some homework to do on which i can't wait (not sarcasm). First i have to get my hands on a full version of windows 7 lol.