What is the best way to wipe my hard drive for a clean install?

I've been having a lot of insane issues with my iMac like my Dock icons not staying, email messages showing in Mail but when I click on them I can't see any text, Spotlight finding emails and files that don't show on my hard drive, etc.
I've decided that I just want to wipe the whole thing clean and start from scratch. What is the best way that I can do this to make sure that absolutely no data is left on the drive and I am totally starting from scratch?

Hi David Hamilton1;
I guess that all depends on how critical your data is in relation to how much time you want to spend doing the erasure. Those higher level erasure options can take a significant amount of time to complete. Personally I don't have anything on my Mac that I think is worth more time then a simple erasure even if that does leave it some what recoverable. To me it seems some people are going overboard on this issue.
Allan

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Message was edited by: macjack

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What is the best way to wipe my hard drive for a clean install?

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