Best way to securely wipe a drive before reinstalling Windows?

[l Thomas l]

I'm selling my old computer and I want to wipe the drive of everything, then reinstall Windows. I know reinstalling Windows wipes the files, but I want them to be securely wiped so they can never be recovered. I already have all the files I need from it.

What do I need to do?

Thanks

 

[capeconsultant]

I use Active@ Killdisk. http://www.killdisk.com/

 

[l Thomas l]

Thanks.. So I can wipe the disk completely with KillDisk, and then reinstall Windows XP right? I'm doing this from my Vista machine, viewing my old hard drive as an external.

I know I'm gonna have to reinstall all the drivers.

 

[seemingly random]

Reloading the os does not necessarily erase the drive. Even a quick format just disconnects the directory structure which might easily be reconstructed. It sounds like 'zeroing' the drive is what you need. Western Digital's drive utility has an option to zero the drive. There's a bootable cd version and an ms-win installable version that could be used on a second drive. This will take ~3 1/2 hours/tb.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD)

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

 

[l Thomas l]

^ Thanks. So I should zero the drive, then reinstall Windows, right?

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: l Thomas l
^ Thanks. So I should zero the drive, then reinstall Windows, right?

Yes, to be sure all data has been erased. A side affect is an implicit disk integrity scan.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Western Digital's drive utility has an option to zero the drive. There's a bootable cd version and an ms-win installable version that could be used on a second drive.

If your drive is not Western Digital and the utility won't run on it, nearly all HDD manufacturers have a similar utility.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: seemingly random
Western Digital's drive utility has an option to zero the drive. There's a bootable cd version and an ms-win installable version that could be used on a second drive.

If your drive is not Western Digital and the utility won't run on it, nearly all HDD manufacturers have a similar utility.

I've seen this also but I just zeroed a samsung with the wd utility.

 

[l Thomas l]

Wow when I tried to install Windows XP on the old hard drive, I came back to a blue screen of death. (I guess you cant install Windows XP to an external.) Then I couldnt boot back up into Vista. Luckily using the CD to repair the startup worked.

I'm just gonna plug in the old computer. But now I'm worried that the Windows XP install tried to install on my Vista drive even though I had selected to install to the external old one. I tried searching for files created/modified today, but I realized by looking at the Vista files that the system files that are installed keep old dates like 2006. But I guess the Windows XP files would be even older, like 2001 since that's when XP came out. And Vista came out in 06 so that would explain why those files say 06

 

[VirtualLarry]

You can't install an MS OS to an external drive. At least not without hacking the install files.

You can be sure that it wrote the bootloader to whatever it thought the internal primary drive was at the time of install.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: l Thomas l
Wow when I tried to install Windows XP on the old hard drive, I came back to a blue screen of death. (I guess you cant install Windows XP to an external.) Then I couldnt boot back up into Vista. Luckily using the CD to repair the startup worked.

I'm just gonna plug in the old computer. But now I'm worried that the Windows XP install tried to install on my Vista drive even though I had selected to install to the external old one. I tried searching for files created/modified today, but I realized by looking at the Vista files that the system files that are installed keep old dates like 2006. But I guess the Windows XP files would be even older, like 2001 since that's when XP came out. And Vista came out in 06 so that would explain why those files say 06

The install needs to occur on the target machine so that the correct drivers from the xp install disk are used. Then, the latest xp service pack needs to be applied - preferably without being connected to the internet. Then, the appropriate mb, audio, video, etc drivers need to be installed. Finally, connect to the internet and do windows update. This will make the computer usable for the new owner.

There is a chicken and egg scenario here. You can't get the nic driver from the internet since you won't have the nic driver to get on the internet. If another pc is available, the drivers (and xp service pack) can be downloaded to a usb key. Another possibility is connecting the target system hard drive to another pc and downloading to a second, small partition.

 

[l Thomas l]

^ Well luckily I had a SP3 CD cuz I got it with my new computer. I had no problems with the NIC driver, connected to the internet and installed all the drivers I needed.

The only thing I'm worried about is that it never asked me for a product key. This is weird cuz I quick formatted before each install, even after the failed one. Maybe the whole time it kept the original product key? It can't have the new product key, even though I used the XP CD that I got with the new machine.

Originally posted by: VirtualLarryYou can be sure that it wrote the bootloader to whatever it thought the internal primary drive was at the time of install.

It's weird, it wrote the windows folder to the drive I wanted, just not the boot files. But when I repaired my install of Vista with the CD, it probably overwrote the XP boot files, right? Cuz I cant find any extra files on the Vista machine.

 

[Modelworks]

Quick format does not erase data. It removes the index to where the files are located. Full format doesn't remove it either under windows, so don't use that .
If you want to erase the drive , just overwrite it 1 time with the drive makers software. All this 10+ rewriting zeros is BS and is a waste of time.

 

[l Thomas l]

Well I did write zeros to the drive once, before the install that failed. Shouldnt that have erased the product key info? I think Killdisk said it was leaving some first few sectors because it said there might be difficulty using the drive if I wrote zeros to them.

 

[Gillbot]

Dban