How to completely wipe a hard drive?

[jseber1982]

watch one of the techtv videos, they show you how to thermite a drive

 

[ShoobieRat]

There's only one effective way to completely remove all data from a hard drive.

What you'll need is the drill, the hedge-trimmers, and some ordinary household bleach...

 

[jseber1982]

might as well throw in some cinnamon, garlic, some ice cubes and some shredded cat fur also just for fun

 

[southernlady]

http://downloads.maxtor.com/_files/...ds/powermax.exe

insert a floppy after you download this. it will install the program and it will do a low level (full) format

I use MaxBlaster ALL the time on every Hard Drive, regardless of make to format to ones/zeros...it will even partition them but it won't do much else to a hard drive that isn't a Maxtor. Liz

 

[EGM]

If that does not ease your mind, physically destroy the hard drive. Smash it into hundreds of pieces, then burn the remains.

You forgot the huge magnet part

Anywho, I think using a startup floppy with a program that does a low level format would be sufficient. Unless your dealing with the NSA/CIA/FBI, in that case I'd resolve to the solution mentioned above.

 

[ShoobieRat]

I'm interested in knowing why you're so determined to smite all the bytes on this drive?

What are you worried about? Got some corrupted bytes who you think are going to rise up at any minute and murder you in your sleep with the leftback from Newcastle down your throat?

Are you afraid some randomly disassociated bytes are going to reform themselves as the deleted pron pics and display them on your screen some day when your mother/gf/friend happens to walk in?

Are they communist bytes? Communism is just a red herring.

Is Elvis in there somewhere?

Are you afraid someone's going to read all those terrorist emails you sent then deleted?

Tell us. We're intrigued.

 

[gsbtech]

Unless your dealing with the NSA/CIA/FBI, in that case I'd resolve to the solution mentioned above.

Yeah... with the right equipment, you can still pull data from a drive that has had a low level format. It is similar to the imprint on a notepad one sheet down. For disks with classified information, government labs have methods where the data is overwritten in specific patterns, and they still physically shred the drive by cutting it up.

There is a nice tool you may want to try called "clean disk security". You can find it at

http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/clndisk.html

Do a high level format and use this tool to wipe the disk using NIS. The program is great for removing all history and trace of former activity from your system - from internet history, cache, deleted files. The registered version will even clean file slack space. It's a computer forensic expert's worse nightmare .

 

[southernlady]

I'm interested in knowing why you're so determined to smite all the bytes on this drive?

What are you worried about? Got some corrupted bytes who you think are going to rise up at any minute and murder you in your sleep with the leftback from Newcastle down your throat?

Are you afraid some randomly disassociated bytes are going to reform themselves as the deleted pron pics and display them on your screen some day when your mother/gf/friend happens to walk in?

Are they communist bytes? Communism is just a red herring.

Is Elvis in there somewhere?

Are you afraid someone's going to read all those terrorist emails you sent then deleted?

I was really worried one time because of a BOOT sector virus. I wanted to make sure the danged thing was off that hard drive so I did the *fill with zeros/ones* the SLOW method, LOL with the MaxBlaster and that takes forEVER! Liz

 

[Vnet]

if its a seagate use the DM Utility or the best way could be the fdisk format ... jus boot from a bootable win98 cd n delete all the partitions starting from the logical then the extended and then the primary... or yeah use the winxp cd that would be more easy as its a sort of user friendly...

 

[gsbtech]

I was really worried one time because of a BOOT sector virus. I wanted to make sure the danged thing was off that hard drive so I did the *fill with zeros/ones* the SLOW method, LOL with the MaxBlaster and that takes forEVER! Liz

Did it work? I haven't had the "privilege" of cleaning a boot sector virus but I hear they can be really nasty.

NIS method takes over 12 hours to just to clean the free space on my system.