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August 20, 2005 at 2:46 pm #2185366
wiping hard drive
Lockedby greymethod · about 18 years, 7 months ago
Is there a way to delete everything on your hard-drive without starting windows I.E. through the boot menu?
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August 20, 2005 at 8:09 pm #3068343
Reply To: wiping hard drive
by thechas · about 18 years, 7 months ago
In reply to wiping hard drive
Not from the boot menu, as you are still booting from the hard drive.
You can boot from a startup floppy or CD and run utilities to clear the hard drive.
If you just wish to erase the drive and start over, I recommend the following:
Run fdisk.
Remove the primary partition;
logical drives if they exist;
extended partition if it exists.
Exit fdiskReboot from the start up disk and run fdisk again.
Partition the drive as desired.
Exit fdiskReboot and use the format command with the / s switch to make the hard drive bootable.
If you desire to totally wipe the hard drive prior to getting rid of the computer, you want to download and run any of the secure erase utilities.
One is:
There are others.
These overwrite your hard drive with a pattern of ones and zeros to make it nearly impossible to recover any data from the drive.
Chas
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June 21, 2007 at 6:13 am #2595938
Fdisk issues on laptop
by daugherr · about 16 years, 9 months ago
In reply to Reply To: wiping hard drive
I’m trying to to format a laptop to install Windows XP over 2000, it won’t do it saying there are install files on that partition. I then decided to Fdisk to start over but when I try to boot to the floppy it comes up with this error, “Invalid Hibernation Partition?.run HDPREPEZ or AMI Save to File Utility” Does anyone know how to get around this problem so I can move on to the better things in life? Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.
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August 21, 2005 at 2:43 am #3068317
Reply To: wiping hard drive
by hal 9000 · about 18 years, 7 months ago
In reply to wiping hard drive
There is also the option of running a Utility from a floppy that writes 0’s to every sector of the HDD if you use this you are sure than nothing remains that can possibly mess up a clean install of Windows. These Utilizes are available from the individual drive makers so you can log onto one of the drive makers and download the Utility and Wipe the Drive. IBM now Hitachi used to have a good one but they no longer support this option and the last time I looked Maxtor had a copy that you could program the number of times that it wrote 0’s to every sector.
That utility exceeded the DoD specifications but remember that if you have any sensitive data at all on the drive there is no way to totally remove it from a professional Data Recovery person so if you are thinking about selling the computer it is far more cost effective to replace the HDD and destroy the existing drive.
But if you just want a clean drive to install from the above will be the best alternative. The trouble with running FDISK and then Format is that it only writes to every third sector so you still have 2/3 of the data left on the surface of the drive.
Col
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August 21, 2005 at 3:01 pm #3068541
Reply To: wiping hard drive
by willcomp · about 18 years, 7 months ago
In reply to wiping hard drive
Darik’s Boot and Nuke runs from a bootable floppy or CD and does a fairly thorough job. It is freeware.
Dalton
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December 10, 2011 at 7:47 am #2445381
clean hard drive
by cw_creativetouch · about 12 years, 3 months ago
In reply to wiping hard drive
I want to sell my laptop and want to completely clean the hard drive of all infor. and then reinstall windows vista..
What do I nee to do?
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