Utility to make data on HD Unrecoveverable

[fred]

There should be no problem at all subing the Seagate for the
Maxtor. The Seagate is slower but, unless you have a
relatively high performance machine or are rendering
graphics and movies which require high data transfer rates,
you probably won't notice much difference. It's transfer
rate is plenty fast to accomodate this work on an occasional
basis as I do. You may have more need for space than speed
as is my problem. You can check the net site for your MB
maker to see if it supports the full capacity of the drive.
If it does not, you may be able to update the BIOS or, you
can partition the drive into partitions that are small
enough for it to use. Many people do not like partions but,
I am from the computer middle ages when DOS 2.0 was king. I
firmly believe in disk partitioning to organize a drive -
nothing about computers bothers me more the open explorer
and see a thousand or more primary floders under program
files.

Are you sure? IIRC Win98 does not have native large drive support & XP
only if large drive support enabled in the registry (& SP1 or higher?).
Without that it's limited to 128G.

 

[lugnut]

Are you sure? IIRC Win98 does not have native large drive support & XP
only if large drive support enabled in the registry (& SP1 or higher?).
Without that it's limited to 128G.

You are correct. Win98 is limited. I do not recall but, I
know it is far less than that drive. I must have missed the
Win98 spec - My comments were primarily under the impression
he is using WinXP. Another limitation will be the use of
FAT32 sectors even in WinXP. I have found WinXP with NTFS
to be so much more stable that I don't think I would ever
want to go back to a FAT32 system. My livlyhood depends on
safely maintaining the data. In either case, the drive can
be partitioned into smaller partitions that Win98 and FAT32
can use effectively. Sorry if I missed a beat on that one.

Lugnut

 

[fred]

You are correct. Win98 is limited. I do not recall but, I
know it is far less than that drive. I must have missed the
Win98 spec - My comments were primarily under the impression
he is using WinXP. Another limitation will be the use of
FAT32 sectors even in WinXP. I have found WinXP with NTFS
to be so much more stable that I don't think I would ever
want to go back to a FAT32 system. My livlyhood depends on
safely maintaining the data. In either case, the drive can
be partitioned into smaller partitions that Win98 and FAT32
can use effectively. Sorry if I missed a beat on that one.

No problem, just thought I'd mention that it might not be quite so
straightforward for W98 unless the op is prepared to partition down to 128G
(binary) and lose the excess. While that would be a bit of a waste the
drive's only costing $50 .

 

[lugnut]

No problem, just thought I'd mention that it might not be quite so
straightforward for W98 unless the op is prepared to partition down to 128G
(binary) and lose the excess. While that would be a bit of a waste the
drive's only costing $50 .

Fred,
You don't lose anything by partitioning a hard drive. It's
like cutting a pie. You simply have several pieces that add
up to the same pie. In fact, you may actually gain some
useable space on a hard drive by partitioning because of the
smaller sectors that may be used. You may also gain some
access speed because the whole hard drive does not have to
be searched to acquire all the pieces of a file when loading
and processing. Another benefit to partitioning is the
reduction of the probability you may lose all the data on a
hard drive if the data in one partition should be come
corrupted. This also allows you to organize your data such
that it is more easily backed up and protected. Windows can
handle up to 26 partitions as drives less whatever other
devices you have that must have a drive assignment. To me,
this is can be likened to dividing a big box into a file
cabinet with drawers where things are better organized.

That being said, I think this discussion may have strayed
too far off topic to continue here.

Lugnut

 

[fred]

Fred,
You don't lose anything by partitioning a hard drive. It's
like cutting a pie. You simply have several pieces that add
up to the same pie. In fact, you may actually gain some
useable space on a hard drive by partitioning because of the
smaller sectors that may be used. You may also gain some
access speed because the whole hard drive does not have to
be searched to acquire all the pieces of a file when loading
and processing. Another benefit to partitioning is the
reduction of the probability you may lose all the data on a
hard drive if the data in one partition should be come
corrupted. This also allows you to organize your data such
that it is more easily backed up and protected. Windows can
handle up to 26 partitions as drives less whatever other
devices you have that must have a drive assignment. To me,
this is can be likened to dividing a big box into a file
cabinet with drawers where things are better organized.

That being said, I think this discussion may have strayed
too far off topic to continue here.

Sorry mate, wrong again, not your week ;-)

If you do not have 48bit LBA (large disk support) you cannot use more than
128G (binary) of the drive. If you do, the block addressing wraps and
corrupts another area of the drive. The addressing scheme works on the
whole drive, not just the partition so you cannot solve the problem by
creating more partitions.

 

[Just me]

Thanks to all for responding.

Sorry for not being able to come online sooner, but last few days have
been playing around with the old drive, which I have decided to
replace with another one.

I'm using Windows 98 SE and intend to use the drive for data backup
and to backup my system using an image utility. The computer came with
only the .CAB files.

Everything is ready for tomorrow morning to ship the drive to Maxtor.
The drive has been formatted and only needs to unplug and change the
jumper to CS.

I did learn a few things wiping the rive clean prior to formatting.
Only wished I could have held on to it a little longer so I could have
played with it.

Again, thanks to all for your help and suggestions.

 

[online drifter]

I'm returning my hard drive to Maxtor for a replacement.

I'm looking for a utility that will wipe the drive clean of all data
so that no data can be recovered from it. This is an hard drive in
which a lot of personal info was stored and, therefore, would not want
for anyone to be able to retrieve remnants of them.

When I had to wipe a drive this worked well:
- mount the drive into another machine as a secondary unit
- format the drive
- use Truecrypt to make a volume the maximum amount of the 'freespace'
- mount the truecrypt volume
- unmount and remove from the computer
- it is clean.

If this is not enough:
- remove drive from computer
- place on a flat solid surface
- hit with a 8 lb sledge hammer
- repeat until many little pieces
*grin*