Erase certain files securely?

I'm giving away a laptop. I want to keep all the system and program files on the HD whilst erasing all data ones. Is there a clever program out there that will do that (ie recognise the attributes of a file automatically). I've seen one where you have to specify the extensions (doc, jpg etc.) to erase, but that's a hassle as there are quite a few. And I want the data to be completely gone, not just look as if it is.

Do you have a recovery disc? Even if you delete the files its still possible to recover the data. A much more secure way would be to completely re-write over the whole disc using something like DBAN which will securely wipe the drive, but if the machine has a recovery partition it will be destroyed (not sure if DBAN allows you to select individual partitions or just whole drives),

Are you familiar with batchfiles?

Take the following line:

del /s *.txt

In dos that says to delete (del) all text files (*.txt) and in all subdirectories (/s).

Open notepad, drop that line into it, then if you want to get rid of all the .doc files, .jpg files and .bmp files you would have:

del /s *.doc
del /s *.jpg
del /s *.bmp

Then you would save the file as for example delete.bat, and save it to C:\ (the top level of the drive).

Warning!

There are all sorts of files which you may not consider important, but will reside within all sort of program file and system folders. They might be help files, or general appearance files. In my opinion, it's not a great way to clean your system.

However, you could make each line:

del /s/p *.txt

This would prompt you for a yes/no every file. Slightly better.

Once ready to run whatever you have, start a dos prompt, remembering to 'run as administrator' and navigate to C:\ and just type delete.bat

If you have specified the /p switch in your batchfile lines, it will start prompting. If not, it will start deleting all the files with a .doc .jpg or whatever you have specified.

There is no recycle bin in dos, so no second chance!

One option is Eraser - it won't delete the data, but you can do that manually and then run Eraser to "erase" the free space..

P.S. - Once that's all done, a secure file deletion tool ought to work (one which erases free space). CCLeaner might be one. I don't use that function much. Personally, I would fill the drive with useless files, then delete em again using a secure deletion tool.

That's the one I couldn't remember. It's better than CCleaner's secure delete function.

Batch files!!! I used to love those back in the days of Win??? I wrote a cracker to backup onto a floppy (remember those?), ignoring ones created before a certain date. Anyone got it, for old times sake?
Meanwhile, back at the thread.......I don't want to erase the programs, just the data. I know that some programs use data files, so it's Catch22, I guess.

My advice:

Install eraser with the explorer shell integration, do searches in windows search for said file type extensions, then right click them and do secure erase.

That sounds good. I'll give it a go!