Originally Posted by
White Hart
how do I get everything off the hard drive of an old Dell PII 233/Windows95 desktop computer?
...
My Dad says 'format the hard drive' - can't see any option to do this, and does it work anyway?
You can format the hard drive from within Windows Explorer (although interesting things will happen). It's better to do it from a DOS boot disk (if you still have one of those).
Neither will prevent a determined person from reading what was there before you formatted it. There are utilities that will overwrite the hard disk, thereby removing everything - I've never used one, but I'm sure a Google search would soon find one.
You will then need your Windows 95 disks to reinstall.