erasing hard drive

[willjm3931]

Will erasing a hard drive get rid of spyware and whatever else ails it? I have a one year old hard drive that I want to put in another computer and it was infected with a bunch of junk. What can I use to erase it?

 

[meanman]

if you are going to use it as a second hdd just format it if you are going to have a os on it then installing the os will format it for you

 

[PC eye]

reinstalling any operating system will not reformat a drive automatically. With XP the installer will most likely delete the current Windows installation and copy the needed setup files to the drive leaving other folders remaining outside of the Program Files, Mydocuments, DocumentsandSettings for a previous installation of XP, and the Windows directory itself.

The XP installer as well the Vista installer now seen can be used to delete the current partition on the drive wiping everything. You then have to instruct the installer to use the current drive space to create and format a new primary for Windows to be installed onto. Are you worried that this won't be enough? One free tool called "Eraser" will totally wipe a drive before even getting to remove it from the old system. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=37015&package_id=65323