Formatting the drive to wipe it clean?

[Stan W.]

I'm sending my old notbeook back to Gateway, and I want to reformat
everything. I do not want any of my data on the computer when I send it
back.
The CD that came with it is just a restore CD. What can I do to ensure that
everything is removed? I do not want to get any program that will "wipe" my
harddrive clean, I just want to know what Windows based commands I can use
to format the drive.

Thanks.

 

[Norm]

Stan, go to http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and download a 98SE
bootdisk image and create the floppy boot disk. Then boot your laptop with
it, run FDISK and delete the partition, create another and then format it.
If your disk had an NTFS partition then in FDISK you will have to select
"delete non-dos partition" otherwise delete the dos-partition.

 

[Stan W.]

why a 98SE bootdisk image? i am using XP.

how do i create the bootdisk image? are the rest of the steps pretty
obvious? i have never done this before? not sure how to run fdisk.

 

[Mordred]

Go to bootdisk.com and download a floppy image for a win9x/me boot disk.
Use that to boot with, delete the partition, and repartition, that
will essentially remove the OS.

Now if that data is sensitive, that's not even a serious obstacle.
Before partitioning/formatting, get a freeware erasing utility and use
that wipe existing files chosen for destruction and freespace wiping,
with at least three passes. That is time intensive, especially with a
slow notebook hard drive. However the sensitive data will be beyond the
reach of most data recovery specialists.

 

[Norm]

Because there is no FDISK in XP so you can't make a bootable with XP and put
the FDISK command on the floppy. Short of trying to delete everything off
your computer while you are using the XP OS, this is the simplest way and
you can't format the disk you are running on while you are up and running.
Download the image from the site I gave you. Then just put a floppy in your
drive and double click the image file. It will create a bootable disk with
the proper commands on it.
Go here to see how to delete a partition.
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php/id/36

 

[Stan W.]

Thanks guys for the info and the patience!!!!

I do have everything backed up.
So once I partition the drive. It will not even boot, so at that point would
I place the Gateway Restore CD in the computer if I wanted to reinstall XP?

Out of curiosity, if I do not delete the partition, and just restored XP
with the CD, what is it actually doing with all of the old data?

Thanks.

 

[Stan W.]

so are you saying that restoring with the recovery cd is a more secure way
to get rid of my files that deleting the partition as described previously
in thead?

Just run the Recovery CD on the drive. It will overwrite what was there and
take the system back to the state it was in at the time of purchase. While
some of your old data could be resurrected with using data recovery tools it
will be much harder to resurrect than if you were to simply repartition and
reformat.

--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell\User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

I'm sending my old notbeook back to Gateway, and I want to reformat
everything. I do not want any of my data on the computer when I send it
back.
The CD that came with it is just a restore CD. What can I do to ensure that
everything is removed? I do not want to get any program that will "wipe" my
harddrive clean, I just want to know what Windows based commands I can use
to format the drive.

Thanks.

 

[shannon]

-----Original Message-----
I'm sending my old notbeook back to Gateway, and I want to reformat
everything. I do not want any of my data on the computer when I send it
back.
The CD that came with it is just a restore CD. What can I do to ensure that
everything is removed? I do not want to get any program that will "wipe" my
harddrive clean, I just want to know what Windows based commands I can use
to format the drive.

Thanks.


.
I'm not sure if this is going to be helpful or not...but

I just wiped my comp clean today also. The disc I have
is called a "recovery disc". Just reboot your comp and
insert the disc. I believe you will have the option from
the disc to format with backing up your files---or
formatting with deleting your files...That's what I did,
so I hope this applies to you also. Good luck.

 

[Bill Moyer]

x-no-archive: yes

I'm sending my old notbeook back to Gateway, and I want to reformat
everything. I do not want any of my data on the computer when I send
it back.
The CD that came with it is just a restore CD. What can I do to
ensure that everything is removed? I do not want to get any program
that will "wipe" my harddrive clean, I just want to know what Windows
based commands I can use to format the drive.

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/