wiping out a drive

[passline]

I am donating old computers to a senior center. I have removed the drives, and installed them as slaves on a working computer. I used software like cyberscrub and stompsoft file shredder to totally clean them. On one drive , my personal documents are not deleting. The reason is that they may be write protected (they weren't) or that some application is currently using them - not! I tried multiple times, rebooting, safe mode, same files are stuck. I even held the drive next to a large speaker magnet. How can I wipe out this drive?

 

[Tyler1989]

killdisk
partition magic
good old manual format - do multi times


Of course you should do this in dos with windows not loaded

 

[passline]

I tried formatting also. I remember right clicking on the drive and hitting format. DOn't rember what the rejection was, but it didn't work either.

 

[passline]

Tyler, I just re-read your post. Would it make a difference if I went to a DOS prompt and did this as opposed to what I already did in windows?

 

[Tyler1989]

Because it will not work running windows... It must be done while Windows is not running.

Get yourself a floppy of killdisk. Free and powerfull. Or you may grab a 98 boot disc or use your OS Install CD.


These are free and format it one time only and if you are trying to hide anything your data can still be recovered so rinse and repeat 7 times because that is the standard.


Edit: linky to killdisk