No Logical DOS Drives!

[Toshiro]

I'm trying to use FDISK to delete all the partitions on this harddrive, but when I try to delete the EXT DOS partition, it says there's logical drives in it so it cant' delete it. When I go in to delete the logical drives, it says there's nothing there. I don't get it. And when I try to format, I get a "Format not supported on Drive F:" and "Format terminated".

It's really frustrating me. This drive used to have like 3 main partitions (about 2.8 GB each), and I want to combine them all into one big one for Windows98.

 

[beedubaya]

Lol, I was just dealing with that problem last night on my old system. Boot from a WinXP or 2000 CD, delete all of your partitions, then reboot from a Win98 CD and create your FAT32 partitions using FDISK.

 

[Toshiro]

I don't have a WinXP or 2000 CD to boot from >.<

 

[ekÆsine]

go to http://www.jetico.com/ download BCwipe. install it and copy BCwipePD.exe to a floppy. use a win98 or winME startup disk and boot with it. if you need to make one go to bootdisk.com and download. use bcwipe and do a single (1) pass. this will wipe all partitions off your hard disk. i think the command is "BCWIPEPD w -d0 -p1 " (or it might be d1) depending on which hard disk you are wiping. disconnect any other hard disks to prevent accidently wiping the wrong disk. read the instructions carefully

BCWIPEPD - Command-line wiping utility intended to shred
contents of whole hard drives, including system data areas.

Jetico, Inc., 1995-2003

IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND
PRECAUTIONS BEFORE STARTING TO USE THE BCWIPEPD UTILITY.
THE UTILITY IS INTENDED FOR SPECIFIC SHREDDING PURPOSES,
INPROPER USING OF BCWIPEPD MAY LEAD TO LOSING DATA ON
HARD DRIVES, RECOVERING OF DATA IN THIS CASE WILL BE
ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE!

NOTE! BCWIPEPD MUST NOT BE USED TO DO A DISK CLEAN-UP!

********************* Contents *****************************

1. Introduction.
2. Jetico Inc. Wiping Utilities
3. Main features of BCWIPEPD
4. Using the BCWIPEPD utility
5. How to run BCWIPEPD from the command-line prompt
6. If You Want to Comment on the Product

************************************************************


1. Introduction
----------------

When you delete sensitive files from a disk on your computer,
operating system (DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX and others)
does not erase these files contents from the disk - it only deletes
'references' on these files from some system tables. Contents of
the deleted file (or file's `body') continue to be stored on the
disk and can be easily restored using any disk tool utility.

To provide complete and reliable destroying of data on computers,
special wiping utilities are used. A "wiping" term is used here to
call a process of shreding a contents of a file or a disk space.
It will be impossible to restore the data stored before on the disk
or in the file if you run a wiping utility.


2. Jetico Inc. Wiping Utilities
---------------------------------

Jetico Inc. company develops wiping utilities for various purposes and
categories of users:

1. BCWipe for Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000 - shell extension utility with a
friendly Windows interface. Being incorporated into Windows Explorer's menus,
it allows user to easily call wiping commands. Set of wiping commands and
options is powerful enough: wiping files, free disk space, swap files, file
slacks and directory entries. At the same time BCWipe cares about file system
structures and does not allow to shredd them.

2. BCWIPEPD utility is designed for more specific purposes, mainly for
government agencies, banking and large corporations, where there is a need
in a safe destroying contents of hard drives before computers can be got
away from the companies. BCWIPEPD is a powerful utility designed as a
command-line program to minimize size of executable, avoid special
installation procedures, hence, to provide a fast way for wiping disks
on large number of computers without wasting time on installation the
program on every computer separately.


3. Main features of BCWIPEPD
-----------------------------

1) The utility is able to destroy contents of whole hard drives,
including partition tables, boot records, filesystem structures,
operating system files and user files.

2) The utility shredds data according to U.S. Department of Defense
recommendations to destroy data (DoD 5200.28-STD): seven pass
extended character rotation wiping.

3) Contents of hard drives is wiped without any dependance of filesystem
used to format the drives (FAT, NTFS, HPFS or other).

4) BCWIPEPD is designed to provide a high performance of shredding.
On modern hard drives performance of write operations is up to 15 MBytes/sec.
So seven pass wiping performance is up to 2.5 MBytes/sec.


4. Using the BCWIPEPD utility
-------------------------------

The BCWIPEPD utility uses low-level disk access functions. Such kind of
functions are available in DOS 7.0 and Windows 95 OSR2/98 operating systems,
but generally are forbidden in other operating systems (f.e. Windows NT),
or it would require installation of special drivers.

To get the utility working as fast as possible and avoid additional
installation procedures, BCWIPEPD is designed for DOS v.7 (or higher),
and Windows 95 OSR2/98 operating systems.

Generally there are two ways of using BCWIPEPD:

1. If operating system on computer, which hard drives have to be wiped,
is DOS/Windows 95/98, BCWIPEPD should be copied to hard drive, or run
from network or removable disk.

NOTE: AS SOON AS YOU RUN BCWIPEPD, CONTENTS OF WHOLE HARD DRIVE(S) ON
COMPUTER WILL BE COMPLETELY DESTROYED. IT MEANS THAT ALL FILESYSTEM
STRUCTURES, OPERATING SYSTEM FILES AND USER DATA, AS WELL AS DISK FORMAT
INFORMATION ON HARD DRIVE WILL BE DESTROYED. HENCE, FURTHER FUNCTIONING OF
OPERATING SYSTEM WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE.

2. If operating system on computer which hard drives have to be wiped,
is not DOS/Windows 95/98, BCWIPEPD can be run from DOS/Windows 95 boot
diskette.

Procedure of wiping hard drives on not-DOS computers is the following:

a) Create boot diskette on DOS/Windows 95/98 computer. To create boot
diskette run standard "format" command:
> format /s a:

b) Copy the BCWIPEPD.EXE program to the boot diskette.

c) Boot the computer using DOS boot diskette and run BCWIPEPD program
to wipe hard drives.

Since BCWIPEPD uses low-level disk access, hard drives will be wiped
without any regards to filesystem used on the hard drive partitions
(whether it is DOS/Windows filesystem or not).

NOTE 1: creating of boot diskette may be done once only, and then hard
drives on group of computers can be wiped using the same diskette. It
saves time of personell required to wipe drives on big amount of computers.

NOTE 2: wiping process of several hard drives will be faster if user
creates batch files, where all options for BCWIPEPD are set once only.
Please read the following section to get detailed information about the
options and examples of creating batch file.


5. How to run BCWIPEPD from the command-line prompt
------------------------------------------------------

The BCWIPEPD program is run from the command line, commands and options
must be entered as arguments to the BCWIPEPD command.

If BCWIPEPD is run without parameters, the program will display a help
information about its usage.


Usage: BCWipePD (commands) [-options]

Commands:
i - display information about available physical drives
w - wipe physical drive. One of the options, -dX or -fX must be used
together with the command (X is a drive number, i.e. 0,1 ...).
Use wSILENT command to skip drive wiping confirmation in batch mode.
Please be careful with the SILENT option.
r - read sector. ( rl - read low part of sector, rh - read high part ).
The following options must be used together with the command:
-sX, where X is a sector number, i.e. 0,1 ...
-dX or -fX, where X is a drive number, i.e. 0,1 ...
t - writes sector number at the beginning of every drive sector.
One of the options, -dX or -fX must be used together with the command
z - one pass zero filling.
One of the options, -dX or -fX must be used together with the command

Options:
-dX ( X is a disk number ) - specify hard drive number, or '*' for all
hard drives
-fX ( X is a disk number ) - specify floppy drive number, or '*' for all
floppy drives
-sX ( X is a sector number ) - specify low 32-bit word of sector number
-shX ( X is a sector number ) - specify high 32-bit word of sector number
(default setting is 0)
-pX ( X is number of passes ) - specifies number of passes
(default setting is seven passes according
to U.S. DoD 5200.28-STD)
-lS ( S is a file name ) - append output information to log file
-n - disable int13 extended functions

ATA disk specific options:
-ah - use all sectors including the Host Protected Area ( HPA )
sectors ( ATA drive only )
Note, the options allows to reset HPA size in software mode,
original HPA size is automaticaly restored if you turn
computer off/on
-ad - disable ATA functions,use int13 disk access.
-af - force last ATA disk sector overwriting.
Note: the sector often contains sensitive data about the disk
(engineering sector), if it is wiped the disk may not be reused.

ATA disk specific commands:
a -sX -dY - set X sectors size of the Host Protected Area ( HPA ) on
physical drive Y.
Note, the command sets hardware HPA, the action is available
once per session. To change the HPA size next time, you will
need to turn the computer off/on.


Examples:

> BCWIPEPD i
displays information about all physical disks on computer.

> BCWIPEPD w -d0
wipe hard drive number 0 according to U.S. DoD 5200.28-STD

> BCWIPEPD w -d1 -p1
wipe hard drive number 1 using one pass wiping by random data

> BCWIPEPD z -d1
wipe hard drive number 1 using one pass wiping by zeroes

As well, it is possible to create batch file (say, wipe.bat) to simplify
using of the BCWIPEPD program. Contents of such batch file may be the
following:

BCWIPEPD w -d* -lWiping.log
BCWIPEPD w -f* -lWiping.log

The batch file may be run from floppy disk where BCWIPEPD.EXE has to be
also placed. Then the wipe.bat file may be run on every computer, which
hard and floppy drives has to be wiped.


6. If You Want to Comment on the Product
----------------------------------------

If you have a product suggestion or comments on how to make BCWIPEPD better,
e-mail us at this Internet address:

support@jetico.com

Be sure to include your name, the version number of BCWIPEPD, and your
Internet address with all correspondence.

Please visit our WWW-site to get information about our other products,
Frequently Asked Questions lists, and other:

http://www.jetico.com

Note that your comments become a property of Jetico, Inc.

We would like to thank you for the time you have spent with us.
We hope that it has been useful to you.

Jetico team

 

[Toshiro]

o_o ....

Thanks, but I found out what the problem was.... stupid Compaq harddrive-stored BIOS. Don't wanna delete the BIOS...

I plan on getting another motherboard and case, so I don't need the Compaq BIOS anymore.