Hard drive delete?
- Thread starter aspire
- Start date
Just reinstall Windows and reformat?
By booting with the installation disk if XP you can easily delete any partition on the drive when first starting the installer. Upon reaching the screen with the option to either press "R" to go to the recovery console to repair the current installation or press enter to install now you would start the installer from there. On the following screen you will see where the drive and partitions on it are clearly listed and you see the press "L" to delete. This will bring you to another screen where you are asked to press "D" in order to confirm the deletion of the partition you selected on the prior screen.
In case you are without an installation disk for Windows there are quite a few other drive tools that can be used. A simple 98 or ME startup floppy will have fdisk on it. Once you boot from that and reach the dos prompt type fdisk at the dos prompt to bring up the utility and choose the delete options once the partition is selected there. Active Killdisk is a freeware that wipes a drive completely by writing "binary zeros" to the drive. That insures that nothing can be recovered from the drive with a recovery tool.
If you need to create a dos boot floppy the files needed with fdisk included can be found at http://www.bootdisk.com For the free version of Active Killdisk go to http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
Even a Linux tool known as the Gnome Partition Editor can delete as well as create partitions on a drive by booting from the cd created for it. That is available free of charge at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-livecd-0.3.1-1.iso?download
What A.K. simply does is the same basic thing that zero fill utilities did years back. It just doesn't take as long that's all. Gee a 120gb drive took some 14hrs. with an old zero filler for WIN 98SE. Once any drive is wiped it will have to partitioned and formatted for the chosen operating system to be installed onto it.
Zero filling prevents your personal data from being retrieved by the new owner. If you used a charge card online you certainly don't want to see identity theft there and suddenly see $$$$$$$$$$$$$ in unexplained bills arriving at your door step. (what in....
where did these come from?! ).
Zero filling prevents your personal data from being retrieved by the new owner. If you used a charge card online you certainly don't want to see identity theft there and suddenly see $$$$$$$$$$$$$ in unexplained bills arriving at your door step. (what in....
where did these come from?! ).