How to completely erase your hard drive?

[axemanxt40]

Ok now previously I thought I completely erased my hard disk by deleting my one partition, recreating it, formatting it, then reinstalling windows!

This is what I have done everytime I felt I got a virus or seriously screwed up my computer. Now last week I got this email which was from "Paypal" and had an attachment which I was foolish enough to download and execute. The program did nothing and then I went back to the email starting reading it over, noticed the grammer was really really bad. Then I called Paypal to see if they sent such an email and they didn't. So in an act of paranoya I figured it was either a virus that wasn't recognized by Norton 2002 or some other thing that sends info in and out of your PC. Therefore I fdisked the drive, formatted it, reinstalled everything.

Just now I noticed a filed on my desktop with no association which I didn't put there myself with the name "~". I scanned it with Norton antivirus and nothing showed up so I open it with notepad...most of it is jiberish but in plain english there was text saying "Main Identity's contacts"! The file was modified last night at 10:25 PM and right now is the first time I've tried to use the PC since then. Also something wierd happened when booting up my PC today the first time I did I went to the Windows XP area with the icons for user profiles to choose to logon I clicked mine and the PC just rebooted. Then the second time it loaded just fine (which was when I noticed the file).

So my question is what is going on here? And how can I fix it so that my HD/Computer completely eliminates everything from its "predecessor" (in spirit of the matrix....). Also is it possible that whatever I downloaded is memory resident and survives the fdisk/format process, how would I go about killing that? Lastly, if I took my NAT down a few days ago and have just been using zonealarm is it possible for someone to hack past zonealarm?

 

[pelikan]

If you want to make sure your hdd is completely erased you can use a utility from your hdd manufacturer to do a low level format.

 

[axemanxt40]

So in that case deleting the partitions of the drive, recreating them, reinstalling them, and then reformatting the drive would definitely get rid of everything right?

But if that is the case how do I have this new mystery file on my PC?!

 

[DTSS]

yes, formatting the drive will ease 99.9% percent of your data! However, don't do the quick format!

Daryl - DTSS

 

[axemanxt40]

Ok I'm curious has anyone read the main body message? There is something deeper here other than what you guys are answering...maybe this is in the wrong forum but please I could really use some opinions here!

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: axemanxt40
So my question is what is going on here?

Good chance you have a virus.

And how can I fix it so that my HD/Computer completely eliminates everything from its "predecessor" (in spirit of the matrix....). Also is it possible that whatever I downloaded is memory resident and survives the fdisk/format process, how would I go about killing that? Lastly, if I took my NAT down a few days ago and have just been using zonealarm is it possible for someone to hack past zonealarm?

Use DBAN but make sure you read the usage notes before you use it.

Thorin

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: DTSS
yes, formatting the drive will ease 99.9% percent of your data! However, don't do the quick format!

No it won't. Formatting a drive simply recreates the File Allocation Table (all the files/data remain on the drive) and verifies that you don't have any bad blocks (maps them out if you do). Similarily using fdisk to remove/recreate a partition does not change the data that's actually on the drive it simply reset the partition table.

Thorin

 

[loafbred]

A friend of mine had that tilde (~) file on his desktop last week, and since he's using Norton and got no alert, I assumed it was a file created by a CD testing utility he used that day. I told him to delete it and not worry about it. This worries me now because his motherboard and processor were dead a few days later (according to Gateway, who replaced them under warranty). If his hardware failure was related to a new virus in that file, I would think it would be common knowledge by now, but it was a very strange coincidence.

 

[bacillus]

fdisk & formatting will not rewrite your MBR which can harbour a boot virus.
to rewrite your mbr you have to boot from your win98 floppy & type fdisk /mbr <enter> at the A: prompt.

 

[AthlonXP]

fvkdisk/format.com

 

[s0nn46a13]

Originally posted by: DTSS
yes, formatting the drive will ease 99.9% percent of your data! However, don't do the quick format!

Daryl - DTSS

No, removing the partition and formatting is not enough to get rid of the data.

If you want to completely remove the information off of your hard drive you'll need to debug it.

Here's a Microsoft knowledge base article on how to run the debug scripts:
Removing Non-DOS Partitions with Debug

Here's another one on how to debug the hard drive from the Dell knowledge base.
How do I use the MS-DOS® debug script to remove my DOS or non-DOS partition?

 

[sirpado]

google for killdisk, it worked great for me. it will wipe out everything, everything

 

[pelikan]

Originally posted by: axemanxt40
So in that case deleting the partitions of the drive, recreating them, reinstalling them, and then reformatting the drive would definitely get rid of everything right?

But if that is the case how do I have this new mystery file on my PC?!

A low level format done with a hdd manufacturer diagnostic utility is different than reformatting (more thorough). It restores the disk to how it was coming out of the factory.

 

[Perplx]

I prefere to use DataGone by powerquest its bootable is very easy to use and runs at 1024x768 in DOS!