I could recover old data from your reformatted hard drive ....... so the only secure way is to remove it from the PC and hit it very hard with a hammer .... i'm being serious here! Or you can buy an external usb enclosure and fit your old drive in it to use as extra storage/backup for your laptop. Sell your old PC without a hard drive once you have shown the buyer it's working. Regards Pete. Yep, only way to do it well is to physically destroy the drive, or whack it in an enclosure. And I'd have to agree that you'd probably get most money for that selling it as parts. No need to destroy the hard drive, just run this on it: http://www.dban.org/ As for the PC, its worth no more than a bag of peanuts. Stick it in your local paper you might get someone to pay 50 for it....