Getting rid of old users' fingerprints

I bought my G4 dual 450s (OS 10.3.9) used from a business. I was told recently that whatever the users viewed or websites they visited (Browser histories, Web Caches, images, webpages, etc) will be stored on the harddrive! I was also told that one of them might be able to gain access to my computer via the internet. How can I get rid of their fingerprints, How can I clean the hardrive totally?!
Also, since I have 2 hardrives, would I need to clean the main hardrive or both?
Thanks-i appreciate the help

Hi, Toonist!
Erasing the drive(s) assumes that you did get the install disks when you purchased the Macs. if not, post back and let us know before erasing the drive or drives.
When you erase a drive, what gets erased is the drive's directory data and not the actual data files that are on the drive. A new directory is placed on the drive and the data files eventually get overwritten as the drive is used. If you want to completely eliminate whatever files are on a drive, use Disk Utility's option to overwrite zeroes to the drive when you erase it. This has the added benefit of mapping out any bad blocks which may be on the drive, which precludes their future use. (A bad block is a physical defect. When the drive attempts to write data to a bad block, it ends up causing data corruption.) It takes up to an hour per each 10GB to do the overwrite (most often far less time), but I'd recommend it for you on the newly acquired Macs.
If your second hard drive was acquired used from the seller, wipe that one, too. If you installed it and haven't transferred files to it from the original drive, you might want to do the zeroes overwrite to check for and map out any bad blocks that may be there, if you haven't previously done so. You shouldn't have to worry about any of the previous owner's data "migrating" there, though, unless you put it there by copying or moving it over.
Gary

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Getting rid of old users' fingerprints

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