Formatting w/ Win 2000

[Scott]

We are currently trying to format about 20 computers for
donation, all of which are loaded with Windows 2000. We
want there to be nothing on them when we are finished.
Have tried several different options, none of which have
worked for us. We have tried using boot disks for
several different OS's including 2000, 98, XP, DOS. Any
help would be greatly appreciated!

Scott

 

[Alias]

Download the floppys for the hard drives from the manufactor of the hard
drives and use them to format the hard disks. They're free.

Alias

 

[Dan Seur]

Merely formatting such drives or deleting partitions will not actually
remove the data on them, which remains recoverable. If you care about
this, you need a drive wiping utility that overwrites drive surfaces
several timeswith a series of bit patterns that virtually guarantee no
recoverable underlying original magnetic domains remain in the oxide.
There are a number of such freebies you can find with google.

If you just want to format or delete partitions, and neither fdisk nor
format will do the job from any of your boot disks, try a product like
partitionmagic or a suite of utilities from your computer store. The
latter are pretty inexpensive and may contain disk wipers as well; read
the box.

 

[Gerry Voras]

get a copy of maxllf.exe from Maxtor -- it will write random data everywhere
and the drive will be almost as it was the day it came out of the factory.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the help! We were able to download a utility
that did the trick! Thanks again!!

Scott