Need To Fully Erase A Partition

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Guest

It seems to me that most elaborate third party erasing programs are designed
to erase an entire physical hard drive

I'm looking for an erasing application / tool that will fully erase a
selected partition of a multi partitioned hard drive instead of the whole
hard drive

Please note this request is for said tool to be capable of fully erasing an
entire partition including the boot sector of any Windows XP partition
 
Are you planning on doing this from windows?
if so, use the Computer Management tool in windows.
Right Click My Computer
Select Manage
Click Disk Management
and you should see the disk properties for all drives.
Here you can delete the partitions, re-partition and re-format the
partitions.

From DOS
I find it best to use Partition Magic
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/system_performance/pm80/
--
Regards

John

MCP Windows XP Professional
 
Howard said:
It seems to me that most elaborate third party erasing programs are designed
to erase an entire physical hard drive

I'm looking for an erasing application / tool that will fully erase a
selected partition of a multi partitioned hard drive instead of the whole
hard drive

Please note this request is for said tool to be capable of fully erasing an
entire partition including the boot sector of any Windows XP partition
Click to expand...

Check out Terabytes copy/wipe utility. They have excellent (although
a bit geeky) software and support AND very reasonably priced too !!
(I am only connected to they via my VISA card ... )
http://www.terabyteinc.com

mikey
 
Thanks for your reply

However, neither Windows Disk Management or Partition Magic is capable of
erasing a partition completely

It seems like the only erasing activity that Windows Disk Management does is
simply to erase the Master File Table

Partition Magic "Delete and Secure Erase" option does more - certainly takes
a lot longer - but it does not remove Windows Boot Sector code when the
selected partition to be deleted / erased was a Windows XP partition

Here is one way you can test to see if an application / tool is capable of
erasing a Windows Boot Sector code

Take a fully erased hard drive (written to zero's) using an appropriate DOS
application / tool and partition the hard drive into four (4) primary visable
NTFS partitions using Partition Magic (DOS)

Boot into each partition by changing which drive is Active - use Partition
Magic to change the Active partition

On each boot, you will probably only get a blinking cursor - no error message

Next, insert your Windows XP installation disk and use said disk to boot
into "Windows Recovery Console"

Use the "FIXBOOT" command and write Windows Boot Sector code to all four
partitions

Reboot the computer into all four partitions using Partition Magic DOS to
change the Active partitions

You will now get the following error message on each boot

"NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart"

Next, use your Windows XP installation disk and install Windows XP on the
first primary partition

From the first partition, if you attempt to delete one of the other three
partitions using Windows Disk Management and then recreate the same partition
using same Windows Disk Management and then boot into said deleted /
recreated partition by using Partition Magic DOS to change the Active
partition, you will get the same error message which means that the Boot
Sector code was not erased during said deletion activity

Note: Windows Disk Management does not write a so called complete Windows
Boot Sector code to a partition when it formats a partition - A complete
Windows Boot Sector code is actually more than one sector -

You can test this by doing the same setup

Create four fully erased primary partitions

Install Windows XP in the first partition

Use Windows Disk Management to format the other three partitions

Boot into each partition, using Partition Magic DOS to change the Active
partition

You will not get the previous mentioned error message

"NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart"

which means that Windows Boot Sector code was not written to said partitions
during Windows Disk Management formatting process

All of the above is also true if you attempt to use Partition Magic (Windows
or DOS version) to delete / erase a Windows XP partition - it doesn't erase
the Boot Sector code
 
From their product discription, I have the impression that their application
only works on an entire hard drive and not on individual partitions
 
Howard said:
Thanks for your reply

However, neither Windows Disk Management or Partition Magic is capable of
erasing a partition completely

It seems like the only erasing activity that Windows Disk Management does is
simply to erase the Master File Table

Partition Magic "Delete and Secure Erase" option does more - certainly takes
a lot longer - but it does not remove Windows Boot Sector code when the
selected partition to be deleted / erased was a Windows XP partition

Here is one way you can test to see if an application / tool is capable of
erasing a Windows Boot Sector code

Take a fully erased hard drive (written to zero's) using an appropriate DOS
application / tool and partition the hard drive into four (4) primary visable
NTFS partitions using Partition Magic (DOS)

Boot into each partition by changing which drive is Active - use Partition
Magic to change the Active partition

On each boot, you will probably only get a blinking cursor - no error message

Next, insert your Windows XP installation disk and use said disk to boot
into "Windows Recovery Console"

Use the "FIXBOOT" command and write Windows Boot Sector code to all four
partitions

Reboot the computer into all four partitions using Partition Magic DOS to
change the Active partitions

You will now get the following error message on each boot

"NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart"

Next, use your Windows XP installation disk and install Windows XP on the
first primary partition

From the first partition, if you attempt to delete one of the other three
partitions using Windows Disk Management and then recreate the same partition
using same Windows Disk Management and then boot into said deleted /
recreated partition by using Partition Magic DOS to change the Active
partition, you will get the same error message which means that the Boot
Sector code was not erased during said deletion activity

Note: Windows Disk Management does not write a so called complete Windows
Boot Sector code to a partition when it formats a partition - A complete
Windows Boot Sector code is actually more than one sector -

You can test this by doing the same setup

Create four fully erased primary partitions

Install Windows XP in the first partition

Use Windows Disk Management to format the other three partitions

Boot into each partition, using Partition Magic DOS to change the Active
partition

You will not get the previous mentioned error message

"NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart"

which means that Windows Boot Sector code was not written to said partitions
during Windows Disk Management formatting process

All of the above is also true if you attempt to use Partition Magic (Windows
or DOS version) to delete / erase a Windows XP partition - it doesn't erase
the Boot Sector code
Click to expand...

There is but one MBR per physical disk. Each partition does not contain
its own MBR, rather the one MBR for the disk contains the data about the
partitions. Perhaps you might want to look into something like MBRWork:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

Steve N.
 
PartitionMagic 8 will do this, no problem. Personally, I use the bootable
diskettes that PartitionMagic can make.


--
 
I am not sure how much erasing is done when using Partition Magic 8.0 Windows
version "Delete and Secure Erase" option, but it certainly doesn't erase
Windows Boot sector code from the hard drive

One way you can get rid of the Windows Boot sector code is to use Partition
Magic DOS - reformat the partition in Linix - then reformat the same
partition back to NTFS - reboot back into the same partition by making said
partition the Active partition - you see the following error message missing

"NTLDR is missing
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart

If at any time you see the above error message displayed, you have booted
into a partition that has Windows Boot Sector code written at the very
beginning of the booted partition

If the bootstrap files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, & boot.ini) are present in the
root of the partition - you will not see the above error message -

If the boot path is correct as selected / specified by the boot.ini file,
Windows will boot up

If the boot path is wrong the next error message you will see is the following

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll"

By the way, although it is commonly said that Windows boot.ini file is an
essential file in the bootup process, Windows will boot up without the file
being present as long as the active partition has an installed Windows folder
in the root of the active partition - you will see an error message saying
that the boot.ini file is missing or corrupt - it will then attempt to boot
up with a default path of C:\Windows and if a Windows install folder is
present, Windows will boot up
 

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