I have copied and pasted what the instructions were in the help section of this eraser it states the following: The usage of Hard Drive Eraser is very simple. You pick a drive you want to erase, choose a shredding scheme (an algorithm used for shredding) and file system, and press "Start" to execute drive erasing. You can only erase a hard drive, or partition which is not used as a system partition from within the program is running. To further explain, if you have a C: as you system disk or partition you can only erase D, E, F etc. partitions. If you want to erase C partition, the one where operating system reside, you would have to access it from the other instance of operating system from other partition, or preferably take out the drive from the computer, connect it to another computer and erase it from there. One hard drive can have more than one partition, and if you want to erase the whole hard drive you should erase all its partitions.
I have to admit I am a computer novice really and do not understand what all that really means! Why would you take out the drive from the computer, connect it to another computer and erase it from there?? I am totally confused, is there an easier way to do this or at least instructions in terms I might understand?? I sure don't want to just throw my old pc away with all my personal data still on it, in our local community one of the churches holds this thing every spring where you can bring in things like old pc's and they will dispose of them for you. PLEASE HELP!!!!