Unless it has a hard drive that is different from every other hard drive in the world, a format should be OK for most purposes.  If he has highly classified information, or highly valuable bank info, passwords, account numbers, and secret codes, you might want to buy a program that overwrites the drive to Dept. of Defense standards.  Most people in the world can get by with a format because most people in the world who receive donated computers aren't so sophisticated that they are going to buy software to retrieve the average person's junk.  If the hard drive is a Western Digital you can get a tiny DOS program on the WD website (Lifeguard utilities) that runs off a floppy.  It will write zeroes to the whole drive.

>My brother would like me to erase any data on his Aptiva, which he plans to
>donate.
>
>Are there any special considerations with this machine?  It's physically
>different from the boxes I've just begun delving into.
>
>

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