How to completely wipe a hard drive?

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the xp cd can only do a high level format. you can recover information off of it, pretty easy.

it will never fix a boot sector virus
 
I tryed useing the software that came with my maxtor... i gave up 30 min into it... and southernlady im guessing ill call ya liz :p make a back up of all your data like that atleast once in a while... i backup all my pics/vids/downloads and school work every 2 months... God that turns into a big mess when you dont organize the files....

Everything was organized, thankfully and I HAD been backing it up onto cd already prior to this happening, I just wasn't ready for the BIG stuff. I had some files, like I said that were too big for a cd and my husband had no room on his hard drive for what I had. PLUS, I was scared we were going to infect his computer with it. By saving it to a cd/dvd, I wouldn't infect him. Remember, we were dealing with a boot sector virus and I didn't want to pass it along so I had isolated myself off the network.

What I lost were files such as World Family Trees that couldn't be copied to a cd cause of their formatting, I needed them to be transfered to his computer but we didn't dare attempt it. I lost family photos that I THOUGHT we copied but when we looked at the cd later, had not copied. Things like that. And the photos were irreplacable. Liz
 
If I ever got a boot-sector virus, I'd toss that drive on the other side of my firewall in my external, buy a new drive, and rebuild.

Thankfully, I've never gotten a BSV.

Come to think of it, I've had maybe 5 major viruses on my computer my whole life.
 
ShoobieRat, IF I hadn't had so much stuff on there that was irreplacable, I would have, LOL. It was my FIRST and hopefully my LAST BSV and it was all because of AVG FREE version 6. Liz
 
Well, my method puts the drive across a hardware and software firewall. I then buy a new drive, build it up, then bring in my important files from the old drive across the firewalls and VP apps. Then I go vyvian on the old drive to make the demons leave it forever.
 
I think Liz likes to experiment with free software - she knows all of the good sites. It's a good way to learn but a good way to get a Virus.

Look on the bright side. If you had backed up your files on DVD, you could have backed up the virus and infected every machine on which you viewed the backup!

Speaking of backups... mine i past due. I'll take your experience as motivation.

I'd stay up nights to clean that disk just on principle!
 
I think Liz likes to experiment with free software - she knows all of the good sites. It's a good way to learn but a good way to get a Virus.

Actually, if you look at WHERE I get 99% of MY software, http://www.majorgeeks.com/ http://www.nonags.com/ and http://decentdownloads.x-istence.com/ and then I verify them with an antivirus prior to installing them, I don't pick them up THAT way. Except for my html! And that I am VERY careful with!

However, given the fact that I DO read HiJack Logs and have to look up links and files I can't find any other way but to google them, sometimes I run into *real doozies* and infect myself that way unknowingly. Hazard of the occupation. Liz
 
i used to have a program that made a zero fill disk. just boot from that and it gave u 5 options 1 being simple high level format and 5 being nothing on the disk at all, but then again it did take about 10hours to run it threw at level 5. but i cant for the life of me remember where i got it from or wat it was actually called.
 
aj2003 said:
i used to have a program that made a zero fill disk. just boot from that and it gave u 5 options 1 being simple high level format and 5 being nothing on the disk at all, but then again it did take about 10hours to run it threw at level 5. but i cant for the life of me remember where i got it from or wat it was actually called.

Powermax does that

Partition magic's secure data erase does it quicker than any other program (it wipe the hard drive 10 different ways, even though the government standard is 7), but you have to take the hard drive out and put it on another computer to use it
 
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