Computer question....
 

I would like to donate my old Apple lap-top to a half-way house for recovering addicts that is looking for computers.

Although I have deleted all files etc. - I am concerned that these may still be recoverable somehow.

Is there a simple way to ensure that an old computer is "squeaky clean" before it is passed on??

Clean: format the hard disk, then reload OS

Squeaky Clean: format hard disk, then write it over with binary zeroes (usually need a utility to do this), then reload OS

ultra clean, acetylene torch for about 5 minutes and 24 secs

or tig weld the disk to the battery

You can get disk tools that will use the DOD method of erasing the hard drive. It usually takes at least 3 passed over the entire disk writing random patterns over and over again. I'm not sure of their names, but any local electronics store should have them.

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda bs=1024

Nothing deleted is really deleted until it has been written over.

Check this --> http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303462

That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

There's several programs to overwrite-erase hard drives, I'm sure your local Best Buy/etc has them.