How Do I Wipe The Hard Drive Clean?

[wase4711]

Well, its time for the "monthly" format again,(lmao), and i would like to REALLY clean the hd this time..
As we all know, formatting does NOT clean your files off completely, and i want to clean it really well this time.

Any proggies that any one would recommend for this? I dont want to have to FDISK afterwords, just be able to throw my XP cd in, and re- install after the "wiping"..

Thanks everyone!



wase4711

[belthazor]

I was under the impression that as long as you didn't choose quick format that that was a wipe?

[billybob3]

Ya, same here. Or, if you have a Maxtor, then you could use Powermax, and perform a low-level format.

[richardc2000]

wase - have you checked out WIPE and ZAP, not to mention
Drive Fitness Test Version 1.50 from here:
_http://www.microstorage.com/Harddriveinfo.htm#Zap


and of course this
_http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/cleandrive1.html :P

[wase4711]

nope, the ONLY way to truly get ALL the data erased completely off your HD is to get a wiping program. Formatting only cleans most of the data off your HD, but any restoration company, or law enforcement agency can easily recover your data off a "formatted" hard drive, unless you wipe it clean!!

If you've ever seen stories on the news, about people who go to landfills, and grab old pc's that have been buried there, they say at least 80% of them have hd's with data they were able to recover!!!

Its not a bad idea to do this when you re-format; i just am not sure the best proggie to use to do this..it has to be bootable, and it has to work prior to windows loading...


wase4711

@Richard, thanks for the pcnineonone link!!

[wase4711]

No, no maxxtor, but a Western Digital...
I will check out those proggies, Richard..Thanks!


wase4711

[JacKDynne]

There are some free utils out there - one on sourceforge comes to mind but the link is at work - I will update when I get back to my resources (faster connection and other stuff ) at work tommorrow

/JD

[wase4711]

Thanks Jack! I will look for it tomorrow!


wase4711

[greypigeon]

I think that all the diagnostic tools have the option to zero fill a drive
(partitions are also deleted !!!!)
Maxtor , IBM Seagate and the others have these tools

Used them sometimes, but can take a lot of time on large disks

As for Western Digital
DL G Diagnostic

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

[wase4711]

thank you grey pidgeon! grabbed the utility and it looks like what I want...
Now, if only I could remember how to FDISK!!!


wase4711