IT Employment

Ask something
Discussion Locked

zap disk

0 helpful
6 replies

by workinggirl627

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

actually i was referring to a disk that can be created in dos that you can run and delete a hard drive on. do you know how i would initiate or run that program?

thank you,

tech girl

6 replies

by willcomp

Should have continued first post rather than starting another. You can rate answers and add comments. We'll follow up. Realize you're a newbie and probably didn't know the "correct" procedure.

My first response recommended Darik's Boot and Nuke which is what I thought you needed. It is bootable (DOS) and does a DOD wipe of hard disk.

If that's not your aim, add a comment to your question with more info.

Type of partition(s)? NTFS, FAT32, or both?

Just want to erase drive or really wipe clean?

Want to delete certain files or folders?

You can't "delete" a hard disk unless you remove it from system. Delete applies to files and folders only. A hard disk can be partitioned or formatted, files and folders can be deleted manually, or it can be wiped using utility programs.

Dalton

by willcomp

No such animal in DOS. Only options are to format HDD or manually delete files and folders. The deltree command in some DOS versions will delete everything but the root directory when used correctly. Formatting a drive will "delete" all information on it. Formatting and deleting only change FAT entries and do not actually delete information on drive. Hence unformat and unerase utilities will allow access to files on drive.

Utilities like Darik's Boot & Nuke completely erase information on hard disk by overwriting it several times with all 1s and/or all 0s.

Dalton

by willcomp

Could also run fdisk from a bootable floppy and remove partition. Data is still there, but much more difficult to recover. Takes data recovery experts to retrieve data after a disk has been re-partitioned.

by workinggirl627

how do you delete (erase)a hard drive using dos. there is a zap disk program that i believe exists in dos, i thought you might know how to access it.

tech girl

by sridharpandu

Yeah I rememeber there was one such program but that was about 13 years back. Will look at my journal entries, old archives and see if I can figure out. But you'll have to give me some time. To be honest, I dont have high hopes of locating it. But will try.

by zlitocook

MS has a program call delpart it removes all partitions and then you need to boot to a 98 or so floppy to repartition and format the drive. Most hard drive makers have a utilitys that will let you clean thier drive for a clean install.

This discussion is closed to new replies.