How to completely wipe clean a Hard Drive??

[Codeman05]

I am about to sell a harddrive and had heard that just regular formatting dosen't complely erase the data...it can still be recovered. Is there some other program I should use??

Thanks!

 

[TheFrag]

I think there is a freeware program that does it, but I am not sure. I know Norton Utilities or System Works does it, though. Basically, it wipes away all the info on the drive and then writes useless data and does it again, and again, and again, etc. for 9-12 times. look at www.download.com for it

 

[nightowl]

Usually your hard disk manufacturer will have a utility you can download to perform a low level format which will destroy the data on the disk. There are also programs you can download to do it too. Check out http://www.panterasoft.com/diskwiper/ there is a program you can download there.

 

[Codeman05]

Thanks nightowl, I'll get that a shot

 

[Tecumseh]

Around here we run format twice and then run the DOS app
DEBUG to zero out the mbr.

This also makes it great for the next user because all the
"gotchas" of microsoft installations are taken care of.

 

[Codeman05]

ok this is probably obvious but I just cant remember. How do I run the dos debug?

 

[Tecumseh]

Create a boot disk with DEBUG and then do this:
Steps to erase Hard drive Boot sector.

There are situations (reasons unknown), FDISK will not erase the sector 0 (for cold boot and disk partition table. This may cause a problem in which a drive cannot boot but reading and writing to that drive works fine after MS DOS installation. Use the following debug procedure to erase the 0 sector and repeat the disk partitioning (FDISK) and (FORMAT).

The dashes (-) and semicolons indicate systems display for each line before you enter each command. Only enter the information inside of the parentheses (without the parentheses). The xxxx indicates the hexadecimal number responded by the system.

WARNING: This routine is for the drive in the C: position. Make sure that the drive you want to debug is set as the C: drive.

A:> debug press enter
- (rax) press enter
AX xxxx
: (0301) press enter
- (rbx) press enter
BX xxxx
: (1000) press enter
- (rcx) press enter
CX 0000
: (1) press enter
- (rdx) press enter
DX xxxx
: (80) press enter
- (f 1000 L200 0) press enter (note spaces 4 fields)
- (a) press enter
xxxx:0100 (int13)
xxxx:0102 (int3)
xxxx: press enter
- (g) press enter
- (q) press enter (this step exits DEBUG)

You are all done. That's all there is to it!