DBAN & Hidden Partitions

[imusorka]

Is there a way to avoid wiping a hidden partition that contains laptop recovery software, including Windows? By the way, could DBAN be booted from a USB stick?

 

[Nothinman]

No, dban doesn't care about partitions. It just begins writing at sector zero and runs down the drive. I don't know if you can give it an offset to start at, but that would be a very niche option.

 

[rsutoratosu]

assuming you can remove your hdd and hook it up to another one
your better of writing 0 from another pc on the partition you picked

http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/using-ccleaner/wiping-free-disk-space

 

[corkyg]

And, a good thing would be to copy that recovery ware to a thumb drive or optical disk.

 

[jolancer]

tools such as
www.sysresccd.org
is free, can be booted from anywere, CD, HD, USB, RAM
contains DBAN
but since you want to target specific space on the disk id suggest just...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/zero

it default boots to a linux shell but you can start the GUI by typing 'wizard'... use Gparted to create a partition on the half of the drive you want wiped then /dev/zero it from console aka Terminal: first example in the wiki link

lota people here also suggest
http://partedmagic.com
I havnt used it so didnt even realize what it was for a while because its name sounds like a partitioner lol

but its apparently very similar to sysrcd, except more GUI so userfriendly. i havnt used it though, and dont know if it has the aplications such as DBAN.

 

[imusorka]

Thanks for the responses! I'm gonna go with corkyg's advice and nuke the whole drive.