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Formatting primary drive?

pete6032

pete6032

Diamond Member
I want to format my HDD before selling it. Is there any way I can just boot to the command prompt and do format c:?

Sorry for the noob question, usually when I format a drive I just pull it out and hook it up to a USB adapter and format from another computer, however this is a laptop drive with ATA interface that I don't have a USB adapter for.
 
You never want to just format the drive, as the files remain recoverable afterwards. DBAN will actually overwrite the drive, which takes longer, but is much more secure.
 
Steltek said:
You never want to just format the drive, as the files remain recoverable afterwards. DBAN will actually overwrite the drive, which takes longer, but is much more secure.
Click to expand...

I was under impression that windows full format writes zeroes throughout the surface, at least since Vista and later. Is it not true?
 
Yes but, by using data recovery software like Active@ Partition Recovery, I can easily recover data after a disk has been full formatted by Windows. Tools like DBAN offer pseudo-random, cryptographically secure algorithms rather than just over-writing data with zeroes. These type of secure disk wipe tools also allow access to areas of the HDD that a Windows full format can't touch, like the host protected area.

A Windows full format or even just a quick format is fine (generally) if all you're doing is reinstalling or want to repurpose a system drive for use as storage, for example. The OP is selling the laptop and didn't want his data to be forensically recoverable which is the purpose for using DBAN.

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