Formatting My Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I am using XP Pro and would like for someone to give me the latest step by
step procedures to format and write to "Zeroes" my hard drive. If there is a
url that will provide me this information, please let me know it! I would
greatly appreciate it!
Thank you for your time in this matter.
 
Carch said:
I am using XP Pro and would like for someone to give me the latest
step by step procedures to format and write to "Zeroes" my hard drive.
If there is a
url that will provide me this information, please let me know it! I
would greatly appreciate it!
Thank you for your time in this matter.
Click to expand...

Free: http://dban.sourceforge.net/ - Darik's Boot and Nuke
Commercial: Acronis Disk Cleanser

Malke
 
Carch said:
I am using XP Pro and would like for someone to give me the latest step by
step procedures to format and write to "Zeroes" my hard drive. If there is
a url that will provide me this information, please let me know it! I
would greatly appreciate it!
Click to expand...

Easiest way I know: Get Knoppix° and open a terminal window when you get to
a desktop. In that terminal window, type (excluding the $ and #
prompts...I included those as a visual indication of what to expect):

$ sudo -s
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/???

??? is one of the following for PATA¹ drives:

hda = channel 0, drive 0
hdb = channel 0, drive 1
hdc = channel 1, drive 0
hdd = channel 1, drive 1
hde = channel 2, drive 0
you get the idea.

If your target drive is SCSI² or SATA³, then you would use sd instead of hd.

This will zero your drive and will not ask you for confirmation, so make
sure you're specifying the correct drive. This will also take a few hours.
If you're shooting for a secure erase, you might want to use /dev/random
instead of /dev/zero and run it several times instead of once.


° http://www.knoppix.net/
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA
² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI
³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
 
Carch said:
I am using XP Pro and would like for someone to give me the latest step by
step procedures to format and write to "Zeroes" my hard drive. If there is
a
url that will provide me this information, please let me know it! I would
greatly appreciate it!
Thank you for your time in this matter.
Click to expand...

Only time I do this is on new and used WD hard drives. I use the software
provided at their website. They seem to work without file system failures
longer, if at all, if I do that first. And, I always use that software on
the PC I intend to use the hard drive on, not in another PC first.
 
Only time I do this is on new and used WD hard drives. I use the software
provided at their website. They seem to work without file system failures
longer, if at all, if I do that first. And, I always use that software on
the PC I intend to use the hard drive on, not in another PC first.
Click to expand...

Try this site. It goes a bit further than just writing zeros. It uses
DOJ or better bit patterns to bulk erase a drive.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/


Good Luck,

Trev
 
Carch said:
I am using XP Pro and would like for someone to give me the latest
step by step procedures to format and write to "Zeroes" my hard
drive. If there is a url that will provide me this information,
please let me know it! I would greatly appreciate it!
Click to expand...


Why do you want to write to write zeros? It's entirely unnecessary. The only
situation in which this makes any sense is if you are planning on giving
away or discarding the drive, and you want your personal information gone.

Assuming that your intent is to reinstall Windows cleanly, just boot from
the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot order if necessary to accomplish
this) and follow the prompts for a clean installation (delete the existing
partition by pressing "D" when prompted, then create a new one).

You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

or here http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm

or here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm
 
Back
Top