Trying to erase last bits off HD

I bought a used HD to be used as an external. It's partitioned into two sections, each about 78GB, one NTFS and one FAT32. Both partitions were empty by all appearances, but I wanted to be sure.

I wiped the empty space with CCleaner and another eraser. That went fine, but there's still a little info that remains. When I open the drives, no files show as existing, but when I right click on their respective letters in "My Computer," it shows a few MB of used space on each partition. Then when I access them via one of Glary's utilities, file shredder I think, it shows that there are indeed some specific folders and files. There are a few desktop.ini files and a couple of system restores or restore points and something else. Glary doesn't give the option to delete them, and it's the only program that I've tried so far that even shows their existence.

Any ideas on what I could do, either manually or via software, to nuke these last few MB from the previous owner? Thanks!

 

Right-click (My) Computer and select Manage > Disk Management.

Now look for your external drive and delete all the partitions. Once that's done, create (a) new partition(s) to your own specifications, format and allocate a Drive letter.

How to use Disk Manager (XP but Vista/W7 are very similar).

 

And, remember: a few mb of data are usually reserved for critical hard drive functions (master boot record, volume boot record, etc.), and usually occupy the first sectors - a good explanation can be found at Wikipedia. These sectors are not normally accessed by commercial drive cleaners, and will remain after a normal format.

 

Many thanks to both of you. I'll check out those links.

I bought the used drive already partitioned, one NTFS and one FAT32. When I re-partition, should I make them both the same type? Off topic of the topic at hand, sorry about that. I use XP Home SP3 but will buy a W7 machine in the coming months.

My only real concern about the few KB or a MB or two which remain on the drive are that they may be kiddie porn or who-knows-what from the previous owner. He did tell me he had a few pictures on the drive (didn't say of what) and there are some system restore points, so I just want to cover all my tracks.

Thanks again.